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

technological typology that focuses on the ideal, or finished product, before it entered the
realm of use or consumption. Although the idea of “finished product” is problematic
because it is unclear at what point the ancient Maya would have considered a product as
such 11 , I use it here to describe the object that left the hands of its original producer
before it was used by someone else (i.e., the consumer).
Classic period microcrystalline-quartz tools from Piedras Negras were made
according to a limited number of technological and morphological templates that were
repeated by knappers for centuries. The final forms of these artifacts vary considerably,
often because of the so-called “Frison Effect” (see Frison 1968), which is the
rejuvenation, reuse, and reworking of primary forms. These post-initial-production
activities may not have been related to the form originally intended by the producers of a
community. Since much of the “post-production” variability is disregarded in this study,
the total number of types is comparatively low (cf. Rovner and Lewenstein 1997). In the
process of describing the technological and morphological diversity at Piedras Negras, I
provide an extensive list of equivalent type-names used in previous studies. This guide
may be helpful to researchers interested in conducting cross-site artifact comparisons.
Although I do not include the so-called “eccentric flints,” referred to here as
microcrystalline-quartz eccentrics, in this typology, many of the forms discussed in this
chapter were deposited in caches and burials along with eccentrics, and must have carried
a similar symbolic load (Hruby 2002). Furthermore, most eccentric forms are based on
the tool forms presented here, suggesting that there is a social and cultural relationship
between the morphology of both tools and eccentrics (Hruby 2002). Piedras Negras
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