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

should be noted that blade-core reduction techniques probably were passed down
carefully over the centuries from knapper to knapper. The lack of obsidian in the
lowlands likely would not allow for the independent invention and mastery of obsidian
blade-core technologies, and it may be possible to track the transmission of this kind of
knowledge back to the Preclassic using indicative debitage types.
The number of cores imported every year to sites like Piedras Negras likely was
very small (Sheets 1991). Low production rate and low numbers of cores could have
increased the value of blades, but also the labor of blade makers. Although obsidian
blades obviously were used for various kinds of food preparation and craft production
(Aoyama 1999), it also is true that blades played an important role in ritual activities, and
blade production debitage was essential to royal caching rituals. Consequently, blade
production may have been an important social event that was ritually performed, perhaps
during special times of the year, such as the month of Mol in Yucatan, when craft
specialists celebrated their occupations.
The relative rarity of blades at Piedras Negras may have increased their trade
value and they likely were not viewed as simple utilitarian goods, at least in the early
stages of their use. Their producers gained prestige from the manufacture of eccentrics
and prismatic pressure blades (Hruby n.d.). In this sense, obsidian blades appear to have
been goods that crosscut social and economic boundaries in terms of value and symbolic
meaning. On one hand, blades can be considered to be highly valued import goods, but
on the other they were distributed to everyone in society. Obsidian blades may have had
the effect of bringing social groups together in some cases, and creating heightened social
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