Stone plate (石皿)
Stone plate
Stone tools in the Jomon period. Details are described in this section.
Earthenware or stoneware plates used to serve nishime (simmered food) or other food in teahouses on kaido (roads) in the Edo period. Please refer to stone plate (earthenware). Stone plates were the large ground stoneware used for smashing or milling. It is considered that they were used with a mill stone as a pair and were used for grinding acorns or various seeds to produce flour, or for grinding stones to get materials for pigment or earthenware. Some stone plates were installed or fixed in living place, and they were considered to be used as a chopping board for cooking.
The raw materials were mainly the core of stones collected from ground such as Anzanfan rock (andesite) or sandstone, or stones in a riverbed. Flat gravel materials were shaped into an ellipse or a rectangular, and a shallow dent was created in the center. These stone plates were excavated from the entire Jomon period, when settlement became more common, and a lot of them were found especially in village remains of the earlier period or later.
The stone plates excavated in the remains of Meso-America are specifically called Metate, and they are called the same in the North America.