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

5.4.1.3.13: Small tanged biface (see Figure 5.2 #34). This type was made from a small
nodule-reduction flake or a large biface-thinning flake. It was reduced by pressure, and
was finished with pressure. It is 8 cm or less in length. The stem was finely chipped by
pressure. A thin, lenticular cross section was the desired result of the reduction process.
This form was not found in general excavations at Piedras Negras, but notched,
eccentric versions were found in cache contexts. It is similar to the stemmed biface,
except for the tangs (i.e., overhanging shoulders), and also for its smaller size. Clark and
Bryant (1991) have conducted the most thorough study of this projectile point type from
Yerba Buena, Chiapas, Mexico.
The small tanged biface type generally is not common in the Maya lowlands, and
many examples are from Early Classic contexts. It is possible that the trend of tanged-
biface manufacture was adopted from Central Mexico, and Maya examples may have
been produced to emulate imported, tanged obsidian-bifaces. Imported Mexican points
found at Uaxactun (Kidder 1947:Figure 64a), Tikal, and other sites were made with a
transverse parallel pressure-flaking technique not common to the Maya Lowlands. At
Piedras Negras, a few obsidian bifaces were reduced by pressure flaking in a transverse-
parallel style, a marker of Central Mexican lithic technology. However, the lack of distal
portions of these bifaces makes it impossible to determine if they were tanged. The
obsidian points, like their chert counterparts from the Maya area, probably were atlatl
dart points. The symbolic potency of the tanged dart-point for the Maya seems to have
been great, because of their inclusion and repetition in many ritual cache contexts from
Piedras Negras and other major Maya sites (Figure 3.2). The lack of tanged bifaces in the
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