However, such rocks are not always available, meaning that quern-stones have been manufactured from a wide variety of rocks, including sandstone, quartzite and limestone. These have naturally rough surfaces, but grains do not detach easily, so the material being ground does not become gritty. The best type of stone from which to manufacture quern-stones are igneous rocks such as basalt.
![definition of quern definition of quern](https://en.numista.com/catalogue/photos/quern_notgeld/5ee7ee54ba6d74.24479026-original.jpg)
Violence is recorded in the book of Judges (9:53 NRSV): “But a certain woman threw an upper-millstone on Abimelech’s head, and crushed his skull.” Manufacture of quern-stones For example DeBoer, in his review of the traditional gambling games of North American tribes, reports that one of the games involved bouncing a group of split canes off a quern. There are however, more surprising recorded uses of quern-stones. These quern-stones are only about 30 cm wide. Incidental usesĪ stack of quern-stones for sale in a market in Haikou, Hainan, China. Many snuff-querns had a small hole or cut made near the edge of the upper-stone, into which a pointed end of a lamb's horn was placed in order to turn the stone an alternative to using a handle. The friction caused by the turning ground the leaves into a fine powder that built up around the edge of the lower-stone. The quern was held on the user's lap, the eye was filled with dried tobacco leaves and then the upper-stone was turned using the handle. Snuff-querns consisted of an upper and lower stone, fixed together by a central iron pivot. In the Shetlands tobacco wasn't smoked at first, but ground up into snuff, and inhaled up the nose. They were thus widely used in gold mining in antiquity. The aim was to liberate fine ore particles which could then be separated by washing for example, prior to smelting.
![definition of quern definition of quern](https://adventuregamers.com/images/screenshots/28763/08-2.jpg)
Querns were widely used in grinding metals ores after mining extraction. The authors concluded that this was probably due to the use of these querns in the preparation of medicines, cosmetics, dyes or even in the manufacture of alloys.
![definition of quern definition of quern](https://septisphere.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/traditional-indian-grinding-stone.jpg)
Moreover, one study analysing quern-stones noted that a number of querns had traces of arsenic and bismuth, unlike their source rocks, and had levels of antimony which were ten times higher than those of the rocks. Other materialsĪs well as grain, ethnographic evidence and Mesopotamian texts shows that a wide range of foodstuffs and inorganic materials were processed using stone querns or mortars, including nuts, seeds, fruit, vegetables, herbs, spices, meat, bark, pigments, temper and clay. In early Maya civilizations the process of nixtamalization was distinctive in that hard, ripe kernels of maize (corn) were boiled in water and lime, thus producing nixtamal which was then made into unleavened dough for flat cakes by grinding with a handstone on a quern ( metate). However, in many non-Westernised, non-mechanised cultures they are still manufactured and used regularly and have only been replaced in many parts of the world in the last century or so. They were generally replaced by millstones once mechanised forms of milling appeared, particularly the water mill and the windmill, although animals were also used to operate the millstones.
![definition of quern definition of quern](https://en.numista.com/catalogue/photos/quern_notgeld/5ee7e0da749986.63059225-original.jpg)
Quern-stones have been used throughout the world to grind materials, the most important of which was usually grain to make flour for bread-making. SQL is the most common database query language.Revolving beehive quern-stones and a saddlestone on display at Cliffe Castle Museum, Keighley. Request for information, generally as a formal request to a database or search engine.