Editing Ground stone (section)

==Creation==
Ground stones were created and used for a wide variety of reasons. Each use resulted in a different development and process by which a person created their ground stone. For example, the process for creating the head of a hammer is different from the process used to create a detailed decoration piece for one’s home. That being said, some processes are basic to most ground stone making.
	
When choosing what type of stone to use for a ground stone tool, toughness is the most important factor. If the stone is not tough enough to withstand hard hits and instead just flakes and cracks easily, the work done to create the tool has gone to waste. A stone that will not shear, flake, or crack when tested against large impacts is the most important aspect when choosing what kind of stone to use. Examples of this kind of stone include [[limestone]], [[sandstone]], [[granite]], [[basalt]], [[rhyolite]] and other [[igneous]] and [[cryptocrystalline]] rocks.

[[Cryptocrystalline]] rocks are good to use for ground stones because they have a very fine grain structure. This is helpful because the smaller the grains are in a rock, the harder the rock is.

Holes could be ground out of stones with the use of sharp pointed stones or hardened sticks. By spinning the ground stone with one's hands and applying substantial pressure to the sharp point into the ground stone, a hole could be drilled into the stone with a large amount of time and effort. Sand would be used to help quicken the process by putting it in the partially formed hole as the sharp point was being pressed. The sand would help grind more of the stone away. To put a hole all the way through a piece of stone, it would be first drilled half way in one direction and be finished on the opposite side.

Some ground stone tools are incidental, caused by use with other tools: [[Mano (stone)|manos]], for example, are hand stones used in conjunction with [[metate]]s and other [[grinding slab]]s (querns), and develop their ground surfaces through wear. Other ground stone tools include [[adze]]s, [[celt (tool)|celts]], and [[axe]]s, which are manufactured using a labor-intensive, time-consuming method of repeated grinding against a harder stone or with sand, often using water as a [[lubricant]].  These tools are often made using durable finer-grained materials rather than coarse materials.  In the North American arctic, tools made of ground slate were used by the [[Norton tradition|Norton]], [[Dorset culture|Dorset]], and [[Thule people|Thule]] tool cultures, among others.  Common forms of these tools were projectile points and [[ulu]]s. These tools were often purpose-made by creating a blank, either by chipping or using a technique where the slate was sawed partway through on one or both sides and then snapped into a blank, then finished by grinding with abraders or whetstones.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Clark|first1=Donald W.|title=An Example of Technological Change in Prehistory: The Origin of a Regional Ground Slate Industry in South-Central Coastal Alaska|journal=Arctic Anthropology|date=1982|volume=19|issue=1|pages=103–125|jstor=40316018}}</ref>