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

destroyed much of the original provenance information and an unknown quantity of the
actual artifacts (Coe 1959:6).
The format of the Piedras Negras monograph (Coe 1959) is similar to that of the
artifacts of Uaxactun (Kidder 1947), but offers more of an in-depth analysis of the
context and morphology of microcrystalline quartz and obsidian eccentrics. Coe
compared symbolic forms between caches at Piedras Negras, but also conducted a path-
breaking cross-site comparison of eccentric forms between excavated sites in the
lowlands. He found that there was a tendency towards conservatism in the caches at
Piedras Negras and noted that there was little change in the forms of eccentrics through
time (Coe 1959:113). Although the focus of the present research is not necessarily on the
caches of Piedras Negras, a large part of the study examines the technology and
symbolism of the production of microcrystalline quartz and obsidian eccentrics. As is
discussed below, the conservatism in symbolic content of Piedras Negras caches did not
carry over into the technological realm, and it is precisely at this point that the study is of
greatest value. Coe dated the caches to the best of his ability and was able to provide an
important temporal framework in which to place newly discovered caches at the site. The
detail of the analysis represented by the Piedras Negras monograph has only recently
been equaled by that of Meadows (2001), who did an exhaustive analysis of cached
eccentrics from Belize.
The dating system for caches created by Coe (1959:149-156) relies on a few
outdated assumptions about Piedras Negras architecture in the western lowlands. I do not
use these dates when possible, and refine them further only when ceramic and contextual
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