A metate (or mealing stone) is a mortar, a ground stone tool used for processing grain and seeds.

Mano is a ground stone tool used with a metate to process or grind food by hand.

Manos and metates were made across the prehistoric southwest by all the agricultural tribes. As corn was a staple in Hohokam diets, manos and metates were needed in order to grind corn kernels into flour. There were three basic types of metates found across the southwest, two common in Hohokam territory. Slab metates are long, broad basins of stone where a one or two-handed mano would be pushed and pulled across its surface, grinding the corn. Bedrock metates are similar, except that instead of the metate being a broad stone it is actually part of a larger bedrock exposure and therefore immobile. The third kind is the mortar-and-pestle variety, where the metate is a circular stone with a deep depression in the center, and the mano is operated vertically in a crushing manner. There are some examples of this third type in bedrock, but they are not very common at all. In Hohokam times varieties one and three were the most common means of processing corn into flour.