File:Pestle (profile) (FindID 487851).jpg

English: Greenstone cobble, circular in plan and section, and egg-shaped in profile, with one pointed end roughly pecked, possibly from hammerstone use, and the other end smoothed and polished from a little pestle use. Note that the rough pecked end forms a visual contrast to the fine grain which occurs at the other end of the piece. The pestle is of a convenient size to be held in the hand. Such pieces do turn up on domestic sites but not in any quantity compared to mullers and rubbers. On these objects the waterworn cobble surfaces are all fresh and unweathered, appropriate for selection from a beach during the Neolithic. The beach selection would ensure hard enduring pieces. It is quite possible that the wear on these objects has been caused by grinding pieces in the axe manufacture process. (Henrietta Quinnell, Clodgy Moor stonework, forthcoming).

Examples of pestles have been found on Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in Cornwall, such as the Beaker site at Boscaswell, near the north coast of West Penwith, illustrated in Jones & Quinnell (2008) on page 47, Fig.11, No.S2; and at the Middle Bronze Age site at Scarcewater, St Stephens, illustrated in Jones and Taylor (2010) on page 122, Fig.60, No.236; and at the Middle Bronze Age settlement at Trethellan, Newquay, illustrated in Nowakowski (1991) on page 149, Fig.62, No.99, which tapers at one end, and comments that 'many cobblestones used as pounders have pecked grips', like this example, on page 151.