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

esulting debitage were perceived and distributed differently based on their function and
symbolism. The value of the object derived from its form, material, history, and use, but
also from the knapper who produced it and the symbolic capital he or she controlled. The
relationship between the producer, symbolic capital, and the exchange value of the
product would have been most evident at the time of the first exchange after initial
manufacture. Unless the object was signed (i.e., nametagged), as is the case with some
ceramic vessels and carved bones, the value conferred upon an object by the status of the
producer likely would have declined after this initial exchange.
If there were a connection between the production process and the value of an
object, then it would be most evident in the symbolism related to the technological
practices that created the object. In the present case, there should be a tight correlation
between the technologies used to create chipped-stone goods and the symbolism of the
chipped-stone goods themselves. I have found symbolic connections to flake type, ritual
use of sequential production-debitage in burials, and the ritual deposition of so-called
mundane artifact types in regal caches. These patterns suggest that aspects of the
production process were ideologically loaded, and that, in the case of blade-core
reduction and obsidian eccentric production, the practice of production at times may have
been ritualized.
I review some of the most obvious examples of this pattern to “test” this
hypothesis. The subjective nature of this study does not allow for a wholly empirical
treatment of the data, but hopefully the following examples illustrate that, in some cases,
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