MULLER

Stone muller or rubber, oval in plan and oblong in profile and section, made from a fine-grained granite beach cobble. The general grain size is about 0.5 to 1 mm with phenocrysts of quartz, feldspar and clusters of biotite up to 3 mm in length (Dr Roger Taylor pers comm). Both faces of the stone are flat and polished through use, suggesting that it was likely used as a rubbing stone or muller, perhaps within a quern to grind grain. The granite contains pale felspar, which is soft, and the dark inclusions are biotite, which is hard, creating an undulating surface which is better for grinding the grain into flour. There are deep linear grooves at both ends of the muller, and on both faces, which have been caused by damage from agricultural equipment, rather than pecking or hammering. The shape of the muller suggests it was derived from an ovate beach cobble typically found at Cot Valley, Porth Nanven, which is about a mile away from the findspot. The source is likely to be from a late coastal intrusion in the Land's End Granite (Dr Roger Taylor pers comm).

Examples of similar rubbing stones have been found on Bronze Age sites in Cornwall, such as the Middle Bronze Age settlement at Trethellan, Newquay, illustrated in Nowakowski (1991) on pages 142-3, Figs.57-58, Nos.86-91 and the Middle Bronze Age settlement at Scarcewater, St Stephens, illustrated in Jones and Taylor (2010) on page 127, Fig.64, No.253.