Natural Science in Archaeology

6.10 Miscellaneous Rocks 141
orthostats with relief carvings of animals in profile were also recovered (Akurgal
1955). Reliefs from Gordion and Ankara depicting the mother goddess Kybele
standing in the niche of a miniature temple (a naïskos) were also carved in andesite
(Akurgal 1961).
Vesicular andesite has been used extensively throughout the world as grinding
stones for grains such as wheat and corn. In South America, andesite quarries are
found 35 km southeast of Cuzco; stone extracted from the quarries was used to
build statuary (Protzen 1985). The name andesite comes from the Andes Mountains
of South America. In prehistoric Ecuador, utilitarian metates and bowls, as well as
decorative statuary, were carved from andesite (Saville 1910). Probably the bestknown
sculpture from the site of Tiahuanaco (Bolivia) is the so-called Gateway of
the Sun. It stands 3 m high, 3.75 m in width, weighs about 10 tons, and is cut from a
single block of andesite (Kubler 1984). The prehistoric cultures of the Mesoamerican
Central and Southern Highlands used basalt and andesite to carve monumental
statuary as well (Nicholson 1971). The Precolumbian Maya site at Retalhuleu, in
the Highland area near the Pacific coast of Guatemala, is best known for its monumental
stone sculptures weighing between one and nearly twenty tons. Several
hundred plain and worked monuments are made from local andesite (Thompson
1943; Graham et al. 1978). Quiriguá, the site of a Precolumbian Southern Lowland
Maya city on the Motagua River flood plain in Guatemala, included sandstone
and rhyolite monuments, stelae, altars, and zoomorphic sculptured boulders (Sharer
1978, 1990). The colossal sculptures from Teotihuacán, Mexico, are carved from
an andesite outcropping about 2.5 km south of the site (Heizer and Williams 1956).
Tuff. In the second century CE, the Romans used volcanic tuff to carve statues.
The famous megalithic Moai statues on Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean are
sculpted from tuff (Shadmon 1996).
6.10 Miscellaneous Rocks
Fine-grained rocks that readily take polish, such as some schists and amphiboles
and alabaster and marble, have been ground into charm stones dating to about 4000
BCE that were used as mortuary items in several parts of California (Chartkoff and
Chartkoff 1984). Prehistoric pipe bowls in North America were also made from
steatite, limestone, shale, hematite, and even granite. Comparative petrographic,
mineralogic, and chemical studies confirm that the stone from the Pieta statue, dating
from the beginning of the fifteenth century and recently discovered in Bern, is
identical to the Golden Palaner marly chert from Prague. These results support the
postulate that the Pieta comes from a Czech workshop (Konta 1993).
In South America, the Sambaquí cultures on the south and southeast coasts of
Brazil produced a series of zoolithic sculptures from hard stones, such as diabase,
basalt and diorite, between 4000 BCE and 1 CE (Prous 1976). The anthropomorphic
figure known as the Raimondi Stele found at Chavín de Huántar is also carved
from diorite (Kelemen 1969). At Tenochtitlán, the Aztecs carved ceremonial vessels