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

establishing chronologies, and also for their apparent artistic content. Chipped-stone
artifact analyses, consisting largely of artifact description, occupied little more than
comments and appendices in larger volumes on architecture and ceramics (Rovner and
Lewenstein 1997:5). Furthermore, little distinction was made between obsidian and
microcrystalline quartzes and their corresponding technologies. The focus was decidedly
on sculpture, writing, and architecture.
Early adventurers and archaeologists avoided more common tools, and strove to
define the mysterious “eccentric flints” found in their temple excavations (e.g., Blom and
la Farge 1928; Gann 1918, 1930; Gann and Gann 1939; Gruning 1930; Joyce 1932; Joyce
et al. 1928; Lane Fox 1857; Linné 1934; Maler 1908; Mason 1935; Price 1897-99; Rice
1909; Ricketson 1929; Ricketson and Ricketson 1937; Stephens 1870; Thompson 1939).
Microcrystalline-quartz eccentrics posed an analytical problem because they did not seem
to have an apparent function. Mayanists had a difficult time attaching a function or
meaning to these cryptic symbolic forms beyond calling them “ceremonial.” Thompson
posited, perhaps out of frustration, “there seems to have been a competition to see who
could make the most elaborate design in flint” (1963:265). Other archaeologists, such as
Teobert Maler (1908), considered the possibility that they were mosaic elements attached
to wooden masks or decorative elements based on Maya iconography and formal
characteristics of other Mesoamerican mosaic fragments. Although this has proven to be
true in some cases (Hruby 2002), the function, symbolism, and meaning behind the
majority of eccentrics cannot be determined in a single-faceted manner, and indeed,
require a detailed theoretical and iconographic framework in which to describe them
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