Lava Querns from the 1986 Excavations at Westminster Abbey
Author(s): D F Williams
Two quern fragments of a grey, fairly coarse vesicular lava, containing conspicuous dark phenocrysts of pyroxene. A small sample was thin sectioned and studied under the petrological microscope. This revealed that the most prominent minerals are frequent grains of green and colourless clinopyroxene, mainly augite, set in a groundmass of small lath-shaped crystals of andresine/ labradorite felspar, opacite, leucite and some xenomorphic nepheline. The composition of the rock is particularly distinctive and it can be classified as a nepheline-tephrite. This type of rock is found in the lavas of the Mayen-Nidermendig area of the Eifel Hills of Germany, a region well known in both Roman and Saxon times for supplying quernstones and millstones (Parkhouse, 1976; Kars, 1980; Peacock, 1980). The Westminster Abbey lava quernstones undoubtedly originate from this part of Germany.
- Report Number:
- 53/1986
- Series:
- AML Reports (New Series)
- Pages:
- 2
- Keywords:
- Quern Stone Stone, Worked
