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

ecause the debate actually concerns whether or not there was any control of some
aspects of utilitarian chipped-stone economies.
Further complicating our characterizations of utilitarian economies is determining
what exactly “utilitarian” means. Obsidian, for example, can vary from a sumptuary good
for elite consumption, to a ritual good for general consumption, to a utilitarian good for
commoner consumption depending on political organization and social context (Rice
1987). Chert and other microcrystalline-quartz materials are assumed to be utilitarian
commodities in almost all cases (McAnany 1992), because of their ostensible ubiquity in
the Maya Lowlands. For ease of discussion I refer to the obsidian and chert economies as
utilitarian economies, but with the recognition that major revision is necessary in extant
conceptual and terminological dichotomies. Ultimately it is difficult to discern “control”
over some aspect of an economy that is itself not clearly defined or understood.
Regardless of some of these uncertainties, which are discussed at length below, the
following sections review some previous models of chipped-stone and utilitarian
economic organization with an emphasis on arguments for and against royal control of
utilitarian production.
2.1.1: Models of Independent Lithic Economy
McAnany (1992a) made one of the strongest arguments for independent,
noncentralized utilitarian production using data from the lithic-rich area of northern
Belize (e.g., McAnany 1989; Shafer and Hester 1983). Following the argument that
utilitarian craft production was independent of royal control (Rice 1987), McAnany
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