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

activities may in turn have given rise to first-echelon social differentiations within Colhá
society.”
As I discuss in Chapter 7, chipped-stone production occurred on the acropolis at
Piedras Negras (quite literally, the royal seat of power) and chipped-stone goods were the
most common materials used in royal ritual deposits. These patterns suggest that craft
specialization may have been inextricably tied to the political economy, in more or less
significant ways, and should not be factored out of large or small-scale economic models.
Instead of asking whether royal groups controlled utilitarian production, a more fruitful
set of questions would ask: how did the ruling elite influence utilitarian production, and
what role did utilitarian production play in social organization? The road to land tenure
may have been a winding path that went beyond the legitimization of one’s ancestors (cf.
McAnany 1995). Ultimately, one must ask the question: at what scale and type of social
organization did utilitarian craft production become important to political power? Kazuo
Aoyama addressed some of these concerns and also the chipped-stone economy of Copán
as reconstructed by Mallory (1984).
2.1.2: Models of Dependent Lithic Economy
Aoyama (1999, 2001) made a forceful argument for royal control in utilitarian
economies with evidence from the obsidian-rich lithic sample found at Copán. He
asserted that the control of polyhedral-core distribution, through direct access to the
source, was an important factor in the rise and maintenance of complex societies.
Specifically, the centralized control of blade-core distribution augmented and maintained
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