This sandstone seed-grinding dish is from western New South Wales. The dish has twin grinding grooves on both sides.

The artefact is part of the Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology teaching collection, University of New England.  It was donated to the UNE teaching collection in 2025 by anthropologist Harry Creamer, who worked on the New South Wales survey of Aboriginal sacred and significant sites, 1973-1987.

See the annotations for technological details about this stone tool.

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This grinding dish was made from a slab of sandstone from a surface outcrop.  The grooves on both face were created by attrition during seed grinding.  Twin-grooved grinding dishes appear to be more region-specific than the more common single-grooved dishes.  The different morphology may have been related to the types of seeds processed on the dish, or perhaps the gesture used in grinding.  The grooves on this dish are relatively broad and gently curved in profile.  The grooves are of nearly equal depth, indicating that the seed-grinder switched frequently between them.  The sandstone is relatively hard and prone to polishing during use (several polished areas are present), so the dish was resharpened by pecking within the grooves.  Remnants of the last series of resharpening marks are present but partly worn away.

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Grinding dishes like this were critical tools for subsisting in the arid zone of Australia during the Holocene period.  Aboriginal people used them to grind native grass seeds into flour.  Grinding dishes were often made at quarries associated with sacred storylines, and the stones were extensively traded throughout the arid zone.