Lithic Analysis: Obsidian (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Busch. Nicolas Angeloff.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper provides context to the linguistic and migrational prehistory of Northwest California and reinterprets the common narrative in light of the recent discovery of a Clovis point in Larabee Valley which extends the reach of Paleoindians into Humboldt County, California for the first time.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dean Blumenfeld.

This study examines the flaked stone economy at the Epiclassic site of Los Mogotes, located north of the Basin of Mexico in central Mexico. We quantified obsidian and chert artifacts based on form and material in order to examine the nature of the lithic economy during this time. The findings suggest that the inhabitants of Los Mogotes were not primary producers of obsidian tools but were dependent on long-distance exchange for already manufactured goods. Despite being closer to high quality...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Tykot. Nicoletta Violante. Gaia Mustone.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Obsidian tools and flakes are regularly found at prehistoric sites in Tuscany, indicating long-distance trade and distribution during the Neolithic through Bronze Age periods (ca. 6000-1000 BC). Some 436 artifacts from six archaeological sites in Florence, Siena, and Grosseto, some 300 km from the nearest geological obsidian source, were tested with a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Geoffrey Braswell.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Permanent occupation of inland southern Belize began at the dawn of the Classic period and continued into the Terminal Classic. Excavations at Pusilha, Lubaantun, and Nim li Punit have recovered more than 5,000 obsidian artifacts that date to these periods. These have all been sourced using portable XRF and subject to metric and attribute analyses....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Dalmas. Lawrence Todd.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Differential use of obsidian sources by pre-contact peoples has been used to infer mobility patterns and occupations in the Absaroka mountains, Wyoming. Identifying sources of obsidian involves measuring the relative abundances of trace elements using eXRF and analyzing clusters to differentiate sources. Using a large dataset of 1,842 obsidian artifacts,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Hruby.

This is an abstract from the "Mountains, Rain, and Techniques of Governance in Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lithic analysis at various sites in the Maya area, such as Plan de las Mesas, Kaminaljuyu, Copan, and Piedras Negras reveal regional differences between obsidian tool production, distribution, and consumption. Some patterns in obsidian economies were shared between these sites, as well as others more distantly located such as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kirsty Escalante.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Use-wear analysis is a valuable method for understanding the various functions of stone tools, a central concern in lithic analysis. This poster focuses on the results of a use-wear study of 50 Late Postclassic (AD 1250-1525) prismatic obsidian blades from two Maya sites in the Utatlan/Q'umarkaj region of the Quiché Basin in highland Guatemala: Ismachi and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Otar Berikashvili.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. “Ortvala Cave” (Double Eye) is located in the southern part of Georgia (South Caucasus), a distance of 98 km from present day Georgian-Armenian border, and represents a multilayer cave complex, combining deposits of Mousterian culture (Lower Paleolithic), as well as the deposits of Chalcholithic, Early Bronze, and medieval periods. Archaeological and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathan Wilson. Philip Arnold.

This is an abstract from the "El principio del fin, el inicio del principio: Arqueología de la transición del Formativo al Clásico en Los Tuxtlas, Veracruz, México" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper focuses on obsidian at the site of Teotepec, Veracruz, Mexico. Specifically, we discuss importation and consumption patterns during the Formative-Classic period transition (Late Formative to Early/Middle Classic period). Overall, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edgar Carpio. Anahí Solares.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The results of the typological analysis of the sample of the collection of obsidian artifacts from the Uaxactún site for the 2010 to 2019 seasons are presented, highlighting the importance of this imported material to the inhabitants of the site, the variety of artifacts, and their possible uses.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Phyllis Johnson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists studying the Maya have traditionally considered obsidian to be a luxury good that was often tightly controlled by the elite during the Classic period. Archaeological evidence from the Classic Maya capital of Tamarindito in Guatemala challenges these long-held assumptions, however. At Tamarindito, multiple lines of evidence support the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Max Ayala.

During the years A.D. 550/600 to A.D. 900/1000 there was a significant emergence of sites with large populations who at one point were subjected to Teotihuacan’s control. This period is known in Mesoamerica as the Late Classic or Epiclassic period. At this time emerging groups sought to control specific resources that would give them power over other groups. One of the most sought after and exploited resources was obsidian. It is known that some deposits were not exploited as intensively and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabriela Montero. Nathan Wilson. Lourdes Budar.

In this paper, we present the results of technological and visual sourcing analyses of over 1000 obsidian artifacts collected by the Proyecto Arqueológico Piedra Labrada (PiLab), directed by Dr. Lourdes Budar. The PiLab area of study, the eastern Sierra de los Tuxtlas, Veracruz, Mexico, includes the eastern flanks of the Sierra de Santa Marta and the adjacent coastal plain along the Gulf of Mexico, and has a long sequence of Prehispanic occupation. Despite this, and almost a decade of regional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anastasia Steffen.

This is an abstract from the "Fire-Cracked Rock: Research in Cooking and Noncooking Contexts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fire fractures in obsidian nodules and artifacts have been observed following several large forest fires at quarries, other archaeological sites, and geological deposits in the Jemez Mountains of north-central New Mexico. This presentation describes the characteristics of thermal fractures observed in this brittle material...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathan Wilson.

In this paper, I present new data on lithic production, consumption, and importation from the site of Teotepec, a large pre-Hispanic settlement located in the Sierra de los Tuxtlas region of Veracruz, Mexico. Like much of the Mexican Gulf Coast, the Prehispanic inhabitants of the Sierra de los Tuxtlas relied on non-local obsidian for most of their lithic needs. Using the results of recently completed technological and visual source analyses, I identify differences in production and consumption...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lindsay Powell. Zachary Hruby.

This is an abstract from the "The Pre-Columbian Cultures of Honduras after AD 900" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The rather diminutive site of Rio Amarillo, located to the north of the Copan city center, is well known as a subsidiary site that was somehow involved in the movement of goods between the Motagua and Copan Valleys. After the collapse of the Copan Dynasty, large civic-ceremonial structures were abandoned and the people that remained,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandro Pastrana. Annick Daneels. Silvia Domínguez.

During the Classic period (1st mill. CE), South Central Veracruz was a mosaic of microstates in which obsidian was scarce but available to everyone. Semi-intensive systematic survey in 400 km2 of the lower Cotaxtla basin showed occasional concentrations that led to propose two alternatives: state-controlled workshops obtaining and redistributing artifacts to resident population, or independent workshops servicing clients across borders, implying the existence of a market-based economy. Chaîne...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Reid. William Ridge.

Wider accessibility to analytical instruments has resulted in the rapid expansion of geochemical datasets useful to trace archaeological materials such as obsidian to their geologic source. While these findings are useful on a site-to-site basis, this paper utilizes Social Network Analysis (SNA) as an exploratory tool to investigate broad-scale patterns of obsidian procurement and exchange in prehistoric Peru. Alongside visualizations of this large dataset, centrality measurements allow us to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shayna Lindquist.

This is an abstract from the "Olmec Manifestations and Ongoing Societal Transformations in the Tuxtlas Uplands: A View from Matacanela" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Matacanela’s chipped stone assemblage overwhelmingly is dominated by nonlocal obsidian, including both products and by-products of multiple reductive technologies. Overarching temporal trends and classification of Matacanela’s obsidian assemblage have previously been discussed within...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Hruby.

The position of Vista Alegre at the Northeastern edge of the Yucatan Peninsula, a gateway between the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, made it a strategic location for circumpeninsular maritime trade in Pre-Colombian times. A robust sample of obsidian artifacts from the Terminal-Postclassic transition increases our understanding of trade relations between the eastern and western sides of the Maya world. Technological and source analyses of obsidian artifacts from the site are presented to fill...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandra Roche Recinos. Charles Golden. Andrew Scherer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the persistent difficulties in understanding Classic Maya (AD 250–900) economies has been the challenge of identifying the loci of production (e.g., workshops) and exchange (e.g., marketplaces), and thus interpreting how the two figured into local and regional economies. During the 2013 fieldwork at the site of Budislha, Chiapas, Mexico–a subsidiary...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Isabel Guevara-Duque.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The use of obsidian in the Andes is widespread and constant starting during the Formative period. Through the morphological analysis of lithic artifacts recovered during excavations in northern Manabi, Ecuador, this poster reveals the importance of obsidian in the area and how it changed throughout time. The Matapalo site, the focus of this research, shows...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alanna Ossa.

I analyze residential inventories from the center of Sauce and its hinterland in combination with regional settlement data from Barbara Stark’s Proyecto Arqueológico La Mixtequilla (PALM I, II) to describe the structure of exchange, production, and consumption of obsidian chipped stone during the Middle Postclassic period (AD 1200-1350) in south-central Veracruz, Mexico. Previous research on obsidian production found a spatial association with Sauce, which could support political administration...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Derek Reaux. Geoffrey Smith.

During the 2016 field season, the Great Basin Paleoindian Research Unit (GBPRU [University of Nevada, Reno]) began investigating Guano Valley, Oregon for evidence of Paleoindian occupations. Our initial work revealed a rich record of Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene (TP/EH) archaeology that appeared strongly associated with an extensive delta system that brought fresh water into Guano Lake from the south. This past field season, the GBPRU returned to Guano Valley and recorded numerous...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clive Bonsall. Maria Gurova.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Obsidian Studies of the Old and New Worlds" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pitchstone is a glassy volcanic rock similar to obsidian but in Europe, its geological occurrence and its use as a raw material for prehistoric chipped-stone assemblages are much more restricted. In northern Britain where good quality flint is scarce, pitchstone circulated widely in the Neolithic with artifacts made from this...