Les récipients et ustensiles en pierre

International audienceThis article provides a description of the stone vessels and utensils recovered from Klimonas. It discusses different aspects of these products: their manufacturing process, their morphological characteristics and their potential functional range. These vessels and utensils come from a wide variety of context and were deposit in the various structures of the 3 sectors. In spite of a particular attention paid to the contexts of discovery, it was not possible to identify a functional spatial organisation as these objects come from levels dating after the life of the building and were not found in primary context. They were mainly found in filling sediment of excavated structures and in building materials. The question of the place of manufacture is very difficult to address. During excavation not a single concentration of unworked raw materials or tools was identified, nor was it possible to recognise concentrations of roughouts or waste stemming from preliminary flaking of the blocks. These vessels, all in limestone locally available, show very simple shape (bowls, bowls-mortars, basins and plats). This is a salient feature of the series which shows a rather low investment beyond the shaping of volumes: no search for symmetry, regularization of walls and finishing little invested. One of these vessels is «decorated» by incision in a grid pattern. Three of them show residues of red colouring matter. Stone vessels and utensils were used for food preparation and consumption, as well as for the processing of non-food matter. Some more ambiguous utensils consist of a piece of limestone, sometimes with a conical profil, in which a little cavity has been formed. We suggest that they could have been used for the processing of food or non-food matter (cupmarks?) but also as a part of construction or as small fat-burning stone lamps. Although few in number (at about 100 pieces), the stone vessels and utensils of Klimonas offer the opportunity to document this new craft which will grow during all the PPN and which will remain very important in Cyprus for several thousand years, as pottery technology was adopted relatively late by the inhabitants of the island