Obsidian blade production and husbandry in the Nejapa/Tavela region of Oaxaca, Mexico

Summary

Studies of obsidian tool manufacture in Mesoamerica typically focus on workshops located at source areas or at the major sites controlling them. In this paper, we explore production at the periphery, from the Nejapa/Tavela region of Oaxaca located roughly midway between the sources in Central Mexico and those in the Highlands of Guatemala. Rather than the thousands of artifacts representing the byproducts and errors of a single workshop, we are forced to rely upon the handful that found their way into the general archaeological record, as both surface finds and from excavated contexts. The artifacts analyzed for this study include all 643 pieces of obsidian collected during the Nejapa/Tavela Archaeological Project. This relatively small number reflects the scarcity of the raw material, a problem which was largely overcome through careful husbandry. Local artisans learned to recover from manufacturing errors and also to craft thin and narrow blades to prolong the production life of imported cores. Scarcity is also evidenced by the small size of exhausted cores from the region, a possible indication of a hand-held blade removal technique.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Mountain Towns and Crossroads: Archaeology of the Sierra Sur of Oaxaca, Mexico

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15488