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

6.3.2: Some Implications of Single-Side Reduction for the Practice of Production
It is clear that a variety of obsidian techniques and reduction strategies were being used
simultaneously during the Late Classic, but they may have all been related. The reduction
of blade-cores on one side could have been a result of poor preparation or original
polyhedral core morphology, but likely represents a lowland tradition that began in the
Early Classic or possibly before. Exhausted “flat” cores from an Early Classic cache from
Tres Islas near Cancuen suggest that reducing the core on one or more sides was not only
a relatively early phenomenon, but was also widespread (Figure 6.20; Tomasic et al.
2005). Recent research at the Parque Cerro de los Muertos of Kaminaljuyú (Hruby 2004)
indicates that reduction on only one side of the core was not normally carried out in this
region of the highlands, and may not have been common to Highland Maya blade-
reduction techniques in general. No exhausted cores with a lenticular cross section were
reported for the Early Classic Ojo de Agua deposit (Clark and Bryant 1997), but since
few of the cores were illustrated, it is unclear whether any cores of this type were found
in the deposit. On the other hand, they do appear in the Belizean debitage deposits
described by Hintzman (2000). The kind of distal truncation discussed by Hintzman,
however, does not appear in any form at Piedras Negras. The pecking involved in this
method (Hintzman 2000) is not in evidence at Piedras Negras.
Over time and through space, these technological patterns suggest that blade-core
technologies varied throughout the lowlands and that local traditions may have arisen.
Large cores for example rarely, if ever, arrived at Piedras Negras as they did at Tikal, and
even varying core size may have had an effect on how local industries developed. It
242