Querns

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Abstract
When excavating in the hill-fort of Cissbury a few years ago the writer found nothing by which to date a certain group of pits except a piece of a revolving handmill (FIG. 23). Even this could not supply the necessary chronological evidence, because the developmental history of the quern or hand-mill had not yet been worked out in sufficient detail to enable one to say that a certain form is characteristic of a certain period. Being thus impressed with the need for such a study the writer endeavoured to collect data, but was met at the outset with the difticulty that of all the hand-mills preserved in our Museums extremely few have been dated at all closely by associated finds of pottery—at least so far as records go—while it seems to be exceptional even for modern excavators to note such associations when querns are found. After all, it is, as Pitt Rivers said, the common objects that are often more important than the rare ones, just because they are common, and it is surely one of the prime objects of excavation to obtain data for the study of the evolution, not only of pottery, but of all common objects.

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