A Materialist Perspective on Ancient Maya Flaked Stone Technology: Chert Blade-Core Artifacts from Caracol, Belize

Summary

Using a recently analyzed lithic deposit, from Caracol, Belize, this paper considers ancient Maya crafting from a materialist perspective. Through this perspective, we consider Caracol’s chert technology not as separate and distinct from obsidian, implicating a separate community of crafters, somehow less prestigious or knowledgeable, but rather, we argue that similarity in material properties enabled the utilization of identical reduction techniques. Those techniques in crafting were shared across both obsidian and chert material, suggesting that crafting communities were not restricted to material type. Through the chaîne opératoire analytical approach, we have learned that crafters at the Classic Period Maya (AD 250-900) site of Caracol, reduced and shaped local chert using identical techniques to that of obsidian production, specifically, blade core technology. This realization, and the juxtaposition of this large chert deposit in the same context of like numbered obsidian artifacts, has prompted a reassessment of common assumptions regarding the distinction between obsidian and chert, both as status symbols and as valuables. For the ancient Maya of Caracol, it appears that chert and obsidian were both regarded similarly, as utilitarian and ceremonial alike.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

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