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

the city. Since the ceramic chronology has been refined, the present study focuses on this
Late Classic (Balche > Yaxche > Chacalhaaz > Kumche) production of chipped-stone
goods at Piedras Negras.
3.2: THE TESTS AND METHODS
The present research is based on a more refined and diverse technological analysis
than has been used previously in the context of a Classic Maya political center. The
technological and material data collected on the chipped-stone artifacts of Piedras Negras
were analyzed statistically according to their date and location. The results of this
analysis were used to test a series of hypotheses about the organization of production at
Piedras Negras. Specifically, I attempt to locate production and consumption locales
based on frequencies of production debitage (see Hypotheses 1 and 2 below). The goal is
to reconstruct the production and exchange systems for chipped-stone goods at Piedras
Negras.
The obsidian and microcrystalline-quartz artifacts are analytically separated into
two different material classes, which contain a variety of technologically distinct artifact
types. The artifact types roughly correspond to the material classes, as well as to the
variation within material classes (i.e., chert, flint, chalcedony, and dolomite as discussed
in Chapter 3). Blade-core technology usually was restricted to obsidian materials, while
biface, uniface, and flake-core technologies were executed in microcrystalline-quartz
materials. Technological overlap only rarely occurred during the reduction of blade-cores
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