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

on the map in Figure 7.3. Operations PN41 and PN26 are located in the low area north of
the acropolis and Pyramid J-29, and can be considered to be well planned and
constructed. Operation 41, in particular, probably was the household of a subroyal elite,
marked as such by the existence of an eroded hieroglyphic panel, fine architecture,
caches, and burials, which contained high-status items (see Figure 6 in Guillot, Hruby,
and Muñoz 1999). Operation 15 also may have been a subroyal elite household, but it is
located in the South of the city (Figure 7.3). Operations PN20, PN23, and PN33 are
located to the south and west of the major civic-ceremonial architecture of the South
Group Plaza. PN24 and PN25 are both smaller residential groups flanking the West
Group Plaza, PN24 to the west and PN25 to the east close to Pyramid K-5. Operations
PN57 and PN62 also are small residential groups, but they are more distantly located
from the site center. These groups are nevertheless part of the continuous settlement that
extends south from the South Group.
Finally, a number of households were excavated in the near-periphery of the city.
These residential groups, largely excavated by David Webster and Amy Kovac, are
somewhat disconnected from the site core, and appear to have some architectural
differences from those in the city center. Most of these sites are located on hills, unlike
other residential groups around the heavily modified environs of the civic temples. The
most thoroughly excavated groups are RS6, ORS16, RS26, RS27, RS28, and RS29. All
of these groups are located in the valley south of the city center, with RS6 representing
the possible edge of large-scale habitation of the immediate population-center.
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