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

technological change over a number of centuries. Inomata (2001:333) postulated an
involutionary effect for elite craft specialization where crafting “involved elaboration and
sophistication within essentially the same technological and organizational schemes”
over time. I propose a similar scheme for lithic traditions of Piedras Negras in which a
relative technological and morphological uniformity was maintained over time, partially
due to the ideological nature of chipped-stone production. Competition between
producers arose at times, however, because each group of crafters probably maintained
their individual techniques and styles of production, as well as their esoteric production
knowledge. The best evidence for competition comes from the Terminal Classic period
just before the collapse of Classic Maya civilization.
This study suggests that competition may have existed between chipped-stone
workers for royal favor and access to raw materials. The field for this competition may
have been the manufacture of eccentrics for royal caches, and blades and flakes for
bloodletting and burial events. In particular, I focus on obsidian-blade smiths and the
imported cores they required to carry out their craft. Redistribution and gifting appears to
be the best way to model the distribution of cores during much of the Late Classic period
because of the small number of residential groups involved in production, low population
estimates for the center, and unidirectional distribution of production debitage, especially
obsidian eccentrics. The analysis of microcrystalline-quartz artifacts produced less
definitive results, and production seems to have been a more widespread phenomenon
due, in part, to easier access to raw materials (see Chapter 7 and 8).
5