Defining a Late Classic Maya Granite Workshop at the Tzib Group, Pacbitun, Belize

Author(s): Sheldon Skaggs; Terry Powis; Duncan Balinger

Year: 2015

Summary

The ancient Maya site of Pacbitun is centrally located between the major ecozones of the Belize River Valley and the Mountain Pine Ridge of West-Central Belize. Investigations in 2012 and 2013 began on a group of mounds, known as the Tzib Group, located outside of the core zone of Pacbitun in order to investigate what is now believed to be a ground stone tool workshop. The workshop produced grinding implements made from granite. Excavations in 2014 into the main mound of the group uncovered more than 500 kilograms of granite debitage as well as large quantities of mano and metate perform fragments varying in size and stage of production. Based on ceramic and radiocarbon dating, the granite workshop is dated to the Late Classic (AD 700-900) period. Workshops of this nature are rarely found, and most of what we know has previously only been gleaned from ethnographic data. Magnetic gradiometry was also performed in 2014 to determine the capabilities and limitations of this technique in identifying stone tool production locations. Guided by the geophysical results and the research previously conducted by Ward (2013), we sought to further document the context, scale, and intensity of production of this workshop.

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Cite this Record

Defining a Late Classic Maya Granite Workshop at the Tzib Group, Pacbitun, Belize. Sheldon Skaggs, Duncan Balinger, Terry Powis. Presented at The 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, San Francisco, California. 2015 ( tDAR id: 395812)

Keywords

General
Granite Groundstone Maya

Geographic Keywords
Central America

Spatial Coverage

min long: -94.702; min lat: 6.665 ; max long: -76.685; max lat: 18.813 ;