Introduction
Millstonequarries.eu
European millstone quarries : a database

 

When grains were ground in mills, millers equipped their mechanisms with stones with specific grinding properties. These stones were extracted from specific sites : called millstone quarries . Both open air and subterranean, huge and minute, these millstone quarries are still found by the thousands in Europe in general - and in France in particular - and constitute a remarkable heritage associated with the history of work and daily life.

Millstonequarries.eu consists of both an inventory of European millstone quarries and a source of related information. It is organised by the CNRS ( UMR 5190, Laboratoire de Recherche Historique Rhóne-Alpes ). The database can be consulted freely on-line and anybody with knowledge of unidentified sites is free to fill in an entry .