1This volume proposes a broad overview of some of the most recent international studies on ground stone (macrolithic) tools in the Near and Middle East. The different contributions deal with new advances on ground stone research in a wide geographical area (Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Israel). The chronological frame includes all periods, from Late Palaeolithic until today, with an important focus on Natufian/PPN cultures and Neolithisation processes, as well as on Iron Age/Antiquity within the Mediterranean area. A large number of the papers focuses on the characteristics and on the evolution of grinding technologies, by contrast with less frequent categories of tools involved in mining (copper, gypsum) and craft activities (pottery production). Two types of artefacts that are very specific to the region are also included in the discussions: stone vessels and rock-cut installations.

2This volume is not a comprehensive synthesis of the topic, nevertheless it offers a useful and up-to-date contribution through a number of case studies. Therein lies the interest of the book, which provides an up-to-date overview of ongoing approaches and discussions on ground stone tools industries. It also demonstrates in the best way the potential of systematic and dynamic ground stone tools studies in highlighting economical, cultural, and chronological insights for archaeological research in the region. The compilation of twenty papers is organised classically into five thematic chapters: methodology and classification, raw material and manufacture, function and uses of tools in the economic systems, and finally site organisation and tools.

3Some kind of contradiction appears while exploring the volume, between the introductive chapter and the content itself. The editors strongly support the integration of new approches to ground stone tools, going beyond systematic inventories, which is definitely an important progress of the past 30 years; this was initiated by K. Wright’s pionneering work (1992) on the Levantine series. However, the aim to “stimulate the debate on new methodologies” applied to ground stone tools is only partially reached here, as a large part of the studies are mainly based on descriptive classifications and typology, and few—two only—integrate archaeometric approaches of raw material sourcing or use-wear analysis. Research in the region should encourage and integrate more such approaches to deepen and consolidate their interpretation of the economic value of ground stone tools.

4The first section includes three very different contributions that are far from the announced head chapter “Methodology and classification”. D. Mudd delivers a very accurate and important analysis of the practices of refuse, storage, breakage and abandonment of ground stone tools on an Early Neolithic site in Kurdistan, in the direct line of site formation theory and discard archaeology (see David and Kramer 2001), and based on a very complete review of the regional bibliography on the subject (Southwestern Asia). D. Eitam proposes a detailed classification and description of a rock-cut complex from the Late Palaeolithic to Early Bronze Age: though widespread in the region, these outdoor installations remain difficult to date and to relate to specific functions without proper use-wear analysis. C. Jeuthe compares two Egyptian series of ground stone tools revealing comparable patterns and behaviours relating their integration into the economic context of the Pharaonic period.

5In the most original section 2 of the book “Documentation: non-archaeological and archaeological sources in comparison”, four contributions demonstrate the richness of archaeological, ethnographic and textual sources available in the Near East. It offers a unique opportunity to discuss the great diversity of contexts and functions of grinding tools for different preparations, especially cereals, oil and wine. In this sense L. Bombardieri displays a very demonstrative, complete, documented and also astonishing overview of the uses of Bronze and Iron Age grinding tools, and of their highly socialising role expressed in terracotta models, drawings and texts. There is also an ambivalence in the symbolism of this activity, as expressed by a punishment associated to captivity in Assyrian Nineveh on the one side, and the strong link with motherhood and fertility on the other side. J. Ebelling questions the close association of rotary querns and a particular image of traditional ways of life, including gendered work in today’s Near Eastern societies. She notably stresses the clear ambiguity between the omnipresence of rotary querns in the regional tourism and traditional iconographies, and the poor knowledge that we have of their archaeological evolution and dating in the region. This is plainly visible in the way both archaeological and ethnographical tools are displayed and integrated without distinction in today’s museum exhibitions illustrating traditional ways of life. From another perspective, R. Fraenkel proposes an essay on bulgur wheat preparation, based on Talmudic and classical textual sources as well as ethnographic observations in Turkey, Arabia and Southern Levant; his detailed description of the different recipes, tools and technical processes known from the Roman period until today highlights the great regional diversity of practices. T. Lewit and P. Burton track and compare archaeological and textual evidences of the use of wine and oil presses in the Roman to Late Antique Near East and Mediterranean area, with the goal of dating and mapping the distribution of these different tools and processes, and of stressing major innovations and regional specificities. These contributions enlighten the diversity of sources available to precise grinding tools uses since the Bronze Age and during Antiquity, and the clear need for more detailed study to highlight regional and chronological specificities.

6A short section 3 gives only two—very interesting—examples of the approaches that can be developed on “Raw material and manufacture”. L. Jirásková offers a detailed description of production traces and reconstruction of the chaîne opératoire of a limestone canopic jars production found at the cemetery of Abusir in Egypt, dated to the Old Kingdom aroud 2400 BC; this is but one relevant illustration of the importance of stone work for vessels production in the whole Near East. The second paper by J. Beller et al. offers a very good example of provenance studies based on combined geological prospections and detailed geochemical analysis focused on basaltic rocks, in a context of important emerging urban centres dated to the Early Bronze Age in Israel; it demonstrates multisource exploitations at local and extra-regional scale, as well as the integration of the site in a complex and large network of trade connexions.

7Section 4 “Function and uses” offers a focus on categories of tools related to specific craft activities including metallurgy and pottery production, by comparison with domestic and implicitly more common food processing tools. Y. Abadi-Reiss et al. are trying a gender perspective to question ground stone artefacts composition on an EBA I site in Israel with possible use for metal production, though the conclusions appear somewhat disappointing on that point. D. Eitam proposes a very representative case-study on a Natufian rock-cut installations in the Jordan valley, possibly used for cereals processing, and he addresses some interpretations related to communal processing and centralisation of this activity, based on their spatial distribution; the study contributes to the debate on the function and status of these very particular complexes. D. Eitam again proposes an overview of the detailed characteristics of some cubic stone tools dated to the Iron Age with original 3D documentation; his interpretation of the tools as weights that might complete the official measurement system, though this point of view is largely debatable. A. Greener and E. Ben-Yosef present an important study of the macrolithic tools from the major Early Iron Age site of Timna (site 35, Israel) especially known for its copper extraction and smelting evidence; the specialised assemblage is mainly composed of grinding and crushing tools possibly involved in ore processing, and with complex management cycles. A. Squitieri proposes a case study of a macrolithic tools assemblage from an urban Iron Age site in Iraqi Kurdistan, and their possible use for ceramic production within workshops in a context of growing centralisation and control of craft productions. Contrary to what could be expected from the title, there are no functional analysis based on use-wear or residues analysis integrated into this section’s research, and this is unfortunate as these kind of approaches should be encouraged and could definitely improve the technical and ecomical interpretations of tools’ function.

8The last section entitled “Sites and tools” gathers a series of case-studies on different periods and kinds of contexts, as demonstrations of how today’s archaeology fully integrates macrolithic tools as cultural and economical evidence. S. Prell presents an interesting and well-documented comparison of the macrolithic assemblage from two sites in Egypt’s Eastern Delta, suggesting two different networks of raw material supplies. In a reference paper, R. Fraenkel offers a large overview of the typological evolution of millstones, mortars and stone bowls in the Southern Levant from the Neolithic to the Mameluk period; based on textual sources, publications, and a large catalogue of saddle querns, Olynthus mills and manual as well as Pompeian rotary querns, the author draws a dynamic and synthetic mapping of the diffusion of the different innovations in the field of grinding technologies from the western to Eastern Mediterranean region, especially during Antiquity. D. Eitam then proposes a case-study of the characteristics of the macrolithic tools from an Iron Age site in Israel, as a viewpoint of the interpretation of the site. J. Schneider et al. address an original paper on the exploitation of gypsum in North Sinai identified on two Roman sites, and focus on the variety of their possible usages. I. Milevski presents a report on the evolution and distribution of the raw materials and typological characteristics of ground stone tools and vessels from the Bronze and Iron Age occupations of a single site. On the same model, E. Adama et al. propose a detailed inventory of the stone tools from the Roman, Abbassid and Mameluk occupations of El Khirba (Israel). All these contributions finally suggest the strong chrono-cultural and economic value of stone tools within broader archaeological studies.

9As a final result, this mosaic of contributions shares several statements on the advances in ground stone tools studies, and lack thereof. Most contributors agree, and regret the lack of a general frame and synthetic works in the region, especially in order to build chrono-cultural classification in an evolutionary perspective, and also to draw attention to the need to better understand regional variabilities. This could only be obtained by the establishment of collective projects on the topic, focusing on the most relevant periods. Our wish is for more dynamic approaches, such as the development of use-wear and residues analysis, to be included into the study of tool’s functions in their economical context. This book demonstrates by itself the dynamism of ground stone tools studies in the Levant. Following the pioneering works of the 1980’s and 1990’s, this sub-discipline is now reaching its adult age with brand new thematics, regions, and periods to explore, with the aim to fully achieve an anthropological reconstruction of socio-economic and cultural organisations of past near and middle eastern societies.