As a mountaineer I have for a very long time been intimately concerned with the physical properties of the rocks upon which I climb. The grain-size, friability and susceptibility of catastrophic failure of rock is extremely important when climbing in remote mountainous regions where help in the event of tragedy is not likely to be quickly available.
The hands and eyes are the means by which mountaineers gauge the properties of the rock which they are traversing. I believe that Neolithic people who made ground stone tools had a similar first-person relationship with the rock they used.
Consider the properties of two common materials - Porcellanite from Ireland, and volcanic tuff from the Lake District. Both rocks are fine-grained, homogenous, robust yet workable. At the same time they are both very distinctive to the trained eye.
There were clearly other attributes which attracted people to particular pieces of stone. The axe-shaped ochre-grinder illustrated here is a spectacular example of a Neolithic stone tool. It was made from a water-worn cobble and bears some resemblance to a stone axe. It was however, a specific tool used for the grinding of ochre (hence the colour). The presence of quartz veins in the specimen hint at the makers understanding that this was never going to be an axe.
There were clearly other attributes which attracted people to particular pieces of stone. The axe-shaped ochre-grinder illustrated here is a spectacular example of a Neolithic stone tool. It was made from a water-worn cobble and bears some resemblance to a stone axe. It was however, a specific tool used for the grinding of ochre (hence the colour). The presence of quartz veins in the specimen hint at the makers understanding that this was never going to be an axe.
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