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

goods were more or less valuable than locally produced ones. The discussion of symbolic
capital in Chapter 2 outlines how goods can achieve a higher value based on who made
them, as well as where, and how, they were made.
Production and consumption areas can be identified by the existence of certain
types of recognizable debitage (e.g., Fedick 1991; McAnany 1989; Moholy-Nagy 1997).
I use frequencies and distributions of production debitage from both household and civic-
ceremonial architectural contexts as my primary dataset, differentiating between evidence
for different stages of production and consumption. For microcrystalline quartz and
obsidian artifacts, three basic stages of reduction are considered, including initial
reduction, final reduction, and the resharpening or reworking of finished tools. I examine
the initial reduction of microcrystalline-quartz nodules for blanks and preforms by
focusing on the material correlates for these behaviors, such as: nodule reduction chunks,
nodule reduction flakes, production failures of blanks and preforms, and early-stage
biface-reduction flakes. Next, I surmise the final reduction of blanks and preforms into
finished tools and ceremonial goods by identifying middle- and late-stage biface-
reduction flakes, notching flakes, pressure flakes, late production failures, and
hammerstone flakes made through use. Finally, the acts of resharpening and rejuvenation
of used and broken chert tools are identified with resharpening flakes (retouch flakes) and
resharpening failures. Since the focus of this study is on production locale, only the first
two categories of data are used in the distributional analysis.
Varieties of microcrystalline-quartz stones are recorded in the study to illustrate
the correlation between material types and artifact types (Hruby 1999). Fine
81