From Quarry to Household: The Economics of Limestone Bifaces among the Classic Maya of Buenavista del Cayo, Belize

Summary

Limestone is one of the most abundant stone resources over much of the Maya lowlands and scholarly research has been focused on its use as a construction material. Limestone was also used to create a variety of portable items, such as manos, metates, bark beaters, and bifaces. In this paper we examine the evidence for production, exchange, and consumption of limestone general utlity bifaces in the Bueanvista del Cayo zone, Belize during the Classic period. Although chert bifaces are more abundant within the Buenavista zone, based on limestone biface breakage patterns we propose that limestone was chosen as a knappable material because of its durability and suggest these tools would have been well suited for agricultural activities. Based on the natural distribution of limestone in the Buenavista zone, the consumption rates of limestone bifaces in households within a 1 km radius of the site core, and evidence for limestone biface production in the Buenavista East Plaza we suggest that these items were distributed through a marketplace exchange network.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Exploitation of Limestone in Ancient Mesoamerica   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage