Granular matter describes large collections of small grains, under conditio
ns in which the Brownian motion of the grains is negligible (sizes d>1 micr
ometer). The grains can exhibit solidlike behavior and fluidlike behavior,
but the description of these states is still controversial. The present dis
cussion is restricted to static problems, for which the main approach is to
describe properly the initial state of each volume element, when it was de
posited from a fluid how. [S0034-6861(99)02202-3].