12. Stone mortars : a Poorly Known Component Of Material Culture, Used in France Since The Iron Age. Including Recent Data For Late Medieval Trading Reaching The Baltic

Abstract : “Mortel oc stampae”, mortars and pestles in medieval Danish, are mentioned in two recipes from two manuscripts of the Libellus de arte coquinaria,² a Scandinavian cookbook tradition of the beginning of the 14th century. The study of Helge Søgaard illustrates the everyday use of mortars in Denmark through entries in post-mortem inventories during the 14th/early 15th centuries (Søgaard 1962: 478). Ten years later, Mogens Bencard (1972) published 23 stone mortars, mainly from the danish port of Ribe. According to the petrographic identifications of Arne Noe-Nygaard,³ all these mortars turned out to be produced from imported stones, nine of which are...