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...