708 mills and milling: The Americas later maize was added to the menu Additionally, these stones were used to grind vegetables, nuts, seeds, fruits, spices, meat, bark, or any other substance that had to be broken up into smaller pieces for consumption or combination with other substances Grinding stones may have served as status symbols In many places in sub-Saharan Africa stones made from igneous rocks such as basalt had to have been imported, suggesting that their owners enjoyed higher social status Additionally, some sites contain more than one grinding stone A site in Zimbabwe, for example, consists of a single dwelling with numerous grinding stones (along with other objects, such as pots, iron objects, and statues), suggesting that the occupant was socially prominent The Americas by Michael J O’Neal Mills were powered in a number of ways before the advent of electricity The most common was simple human power In cultures throughout the world, including the Americas, stones were used to mill grain Generally these hand-powered mills were similar to a mortar and pestle—that is, a bowl or flat surface (the mortar) to hold the substance being milled, and a tool (the pestle) worked back and forth to grind the substance A more technologically advanced option to mill greater quantities of material was the use of animals, including horses, mules, and oxen, to turn large millstones Still more advanced societies powered mills with water, harnessing the energy from the flowing water of a river or stream to turn a waterwheel, which is attached by gears to a millstone or other type of milling tool In some areas of the world mill operators stored water in reservoirs located above the mill, which they then released to turn the waterwheel The windmill operates according to the same general principle but harnesses the energy of wind to operate the tool Both waterwheels and windmills, though, require familiarity with the technology of the wheel, so they were not employed in the Americas until after contact with the Europeans The development of milling technology is inevitably an outgrowth of the needs of the people The most common need is food, so in medieval North America hand mills for grinding grain and corn were commonly used In general, there was no such thing as commercial production; milling was typically done by individual households Among the Cherokee people, for instance, it was necessary to grind corn into a form that could be used for the baking of breads A traditional way of doing this was first to boil corn in a pot and then to rinse the corn The corn would be placed in a corn beater referred to as a ka-no-na Typically, the beater consisted of a hollowed-out stump or log into which the boiled corn was placed The corn was beaten with a heavy pole until it attained the consistency of flour This corn flour could then be used to make bread or combined with other ingredients, such as beans, to make soups Milling technologies were not highly developed in areas of the Americas where the land provided suitable food that could be consumed in its natural state People in the far north relied primarily on products from the sea for their subsistence, in particular sea mammals; Eastern Woodlands Indians harvested the forests for game, fruits, and nuts; and Plains Indians relied on game animals Further, extensive milling tends to be a characteristic of sedentary agricultural societies, so more nomadic cultures, such as the Plains Indians, devoted little attention to it The milling of grains was much more important to the peoples of the southwestern United States and throughout much of Mesoamerica These people relied on agriculture for their subsistence, so a daily task for many was grinding grains, corn, beans, and other foodstuffs A good example is provided by the peoples of the American Southwest, although their technologies would have been similar to those used farther south throughout Mesoamerica and South America Here archaeologists have uncovered ample evidence of the production of milling stones In one region of western Arizona and eastern California an area of some 300 acres was given over to the production of milling stones Archaeologists have determined, on the basis of debris and discarded stones, that over the centuries hundreds of thousands of these stones must have been manufactured Typically this production took place on flat areas roughly feet in diameter The production of the metate, or lower milling stone—the stone on which the material to be milled was placed—consisted first of testing stones for their integrity; numerous examples of stones rejected because of fault lines have been found Using hammerstones made of quartz, an appropriate rock was shaped so that it provided a convex (that is, slightly bowl-shaped) area Hammerstones came in various sizes and weights; the larger ones were used to chip away the larger pieces of excess stone, and progressively smaller ones were used to chip away flakes of stone until the lower milling stone was complete A similar process was used to produce the mano, or handheld pestle While the pestles came in various sizes, a common size was that of a large loaf of bread Once the two components were made, the process of milling grain was relatively simple The grain was placed on the metate, and the mano was rolled back and forth over it This action crushed the outer hulls of the grain, which was then filtered out, leaving behind the edible core Additionally, people in the American Southwest and farther south created gristmills out of wood Similarly to Ameri-