The Organization of Chipped-Stone Economies at Piedras Negras ...

of the eccentrics from the site are derivations from the mid-size biface trajectories of both
local and imported materials, but some are made by slightly modifying biface-thinning
flakes and nodule reduction flakes. Unifacial knives, unifacial scrapers, blade cores, and
flake cores also are present at Piedras Negras, but they are largely eclipsed by bifacial
technologies. The two less functionally desirable types of debitage from nodule
reduction, and also biface-thinning flakes, were often deposited in elite burial and cache
contexts at Piedras Negras. This pattern resembles those from other sites in Mesoamerica,
such as Teotihuacan and Tikal (Moholy-Nagy 1997).
At Piedras Negras 4,557 chert artifacts and debitage pieces were found in
commoner and elite contexts. More than 100 newly discovered chert eccentrics, mostly
from cache deposits in royal structures, also are included in this total. Only one possible
workshop dump of ~3,000 flakes was found in the South Group (Operation 15), but they
consist of late-stage, biface percussion-flakes and pressure flakes from biface reduction
and resharpening. The only deposits containing debitage taken directly from a large-
biface workshop were from royal architectural and burial contexts. The majority of biface
thinning flakes and other production debitage comes from household fill and detritus left
on abandoned house floors. Specific flakes mark production activities, and visual
sourcing indicates whether that material was of local or nonlocal origin.
4.1.3.1: Distribution of microcrystalline quartzes. The materials I recorded for the
Piedras Negras artifacts were chert (C), silicified limestone (SL), chalcedony (CH),
dolomite and dolomitic limestone (D), petrified wood (PW), flint (F), and quartzite (QZ).
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