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

flakes, either from other workshops or from the river bar below the site, is not clear at
this time. Nodules were reduced using a large hammerstone that produced flakes with
large platforms. Nodule reduction flakes are characterized here as cortical, partially
cortical (i.e., flakes retaining some cortex).
Due to the abundance of natural seams and fractures in the microcrystalline
quartzes from the Middle Usumacinta region, some of the most common debitage types
are chunks and shatter (see Figure 7.26). These angular pieces of debitage can retain
percussion scars, cortex, and also quartz crystal seams that feature no conchoidal-fracture
pattern on their surfaces. The removal of inclusions and quartz seams during the initial
reduction of nodules was of great importance to the successful production of a biface.
Chunks and shatter, however, occur in all material types, and are considered to be a good
marker for production activities, especially since they are rarely used as tools. However,
they do appear with some frequency in royal caches and dedication rituals.
Once a suitable nodule, cobble section, or nodule reduction flake was reduced
with biface- or uniface-tool trajectories in mind, cortical and noncortical reduction-flakes
were removed. Unless the nodule was extremely small, the flakes were large (>12 cm) to
medium (8-12 cm) in size. Platform preparation increased with each stage of reduction,
and depending on the form of the flake or blank, later nodule reduction-flakes would
have more or less cortex remaining on the dorsal surface. In many cases, the platform
may be multifaceted, and appear to be a biface-reduction flake, but without any actual
bifacial (bi-directional) scarring pattern on the dorsal surface. Flakes from this stage in
the reduction sequence make it impossible to tell what was the intended, finished product.
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