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

The La Sufricaya site differed from both of these, however, in both color and quality. La
Sufricaya features 39% fine material and 74% of smoky colored obsidian, which suggests
that La Sufricaya may have had greater access to obsidian from the La Joya part of the El
Chayal source during the Early Classic period. It may be significant that the Holmul
study area had heightened interaction with Tikal during the Early Classic. Fine and
Mexican obsidians at Sufricaya may indicate that the Holmul study area enjoyed some of
the economic success of Tikal before the “hiatus,” a destructive event known to have
occurred at Tikal in the Middle Classic (Martin and Grube 2001). The relative lack of
production evidence at Holmul during the Late Classic suggests that the Maya in this area
did not have great access to high-quality obsidian and blade cores as they did during the
Early Classic. The lack of obsidian eccentrics at Holmul also indicates that they did not
share in the same lithic traditions as the Central Petén. This being said, there was one
Late Classic obsidian eccentric cache found at Holmul, which may coincide with a defeat
in warfare by Tikal in the 8 th century.
trade post.
Braswell and Glascock (n.d.:32) have noted that Tikal likely was a major obsidian
That so much obsidian reached Tikal from points south, and that so little
left it and entered the Calakmul kingdom and other polities in the northcentral
and northern lowlands, strongly suggest that the distribution
system of Tikal was firmly bounded, most probably in the form of an
administered market economy. Tikal may have enjoyed a special exchange
relationship with highland polities such as Kaminaljuyú, which also may
explain the abundance of obsidian at the lowland city.
Although the texts at Piedras Negras do not address any clear political relationship
between Tikal and Piedras Negras, the similarity in the obsidian and microcrystalline-
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