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

“technological-resource realm” for gaining economic wealth and social power. Chipped-
stone production and other utilitarian crafts fall squarely in this category, and thus have
little to do with the political economy.
For McAnany (1992b), the production of utilitarian chert artifacts in internally
heterogeneous households exhibited some similarities to, and differences from, the
production of sumptuary goods (e.g., carved jade). Like the production of sumptuary
goods, utilitarian production was disconnected from the agricultural foundations of the
economy. On the other hand, controlling the production and exchange of sumptuary
goods was key in legitimizing social differentiation by royal families, while utilitarian
production was not. The production of sumptuary goods was attached to elite households
for the exchange and consumption by elites. Sumptuary goods of a ceremonial and
ornamental nature were themselves not convertible to usable wealth or agricultural
surplus, but were status markers often used in elite gifting strategies (McAnany
1992b:92; Moholy-Nagy 1997). The primary role of agricultural production and land
tenure in the political economy underlies most arguments that downplay the role of
utilitarian and sumptuary economies (e.g., McAnany 1995; Smith 1976). In sum, she
described a tripartite plural economy 1 , which was rather hierarchically organized: (1) the
agrarian economy, which produced economic wealth and was based on land tenure and
tribute to landholders; (2) the prestige economy, which produced goods that were
emblems of social power; and (3) the utilitarian economy, which kept the system
functioning, but produced no wealth or prestige.
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