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

technology may mark the production of eccentrics as a doxic form of practice (see
Chapter 8).
The early Late Classic period at Piedras Negras (A.D. 603-757, largely marked by
the Yaxche ceramic phase), which is the topic of this discussion, reveals a continuation of
the notched flake technology, but with adherence to a symbol system that differs from
earlier obsidian eccentrics. Although the sample is quite small for the Balche phase, and
may very well involve similar gods, the flake to symbol correlation is not in evidence.
The two caches analyzed above should also not be considered the norm in terms of cache
content. Tikal caches regularly contain a series of nine obsidians, which had
technological and symbolic regularity between caches and over time (Coe 1965), but
Piedras Negras caches appear to have been more varied. The same symbolic and
technological forms appear throughout the Piedras Negras sample, but in differing
numbers and combinations of eccentrics. The meaning and variation of cache deposits
still remains to be understood, but it is clear that they are using combinations of the same
eccentrics to express different cosmological meanings.
Sometime after the demise of Ruler 4 (A.D. 757) many of the same symbolic
forms were retained, but the way obsidian eccentrics were made changed significantly.
Biface technologies were introduced to the manufacture of obsidian eccentrics, and as a
result, they became thinner and better defined (Figure 7.20). Before the Terminal Classic,
eccentrics were produced with notching, indirect percussion, and bipolar technologies
that could have been carried out by blade producers who knew and understood that type
of reduction. At the onset of the Chacalhaaz phase, however, bifacial technologies,
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