Cotzumalguapa's Lithic Industry: Procurement, Production, and Distribution of Obsidian Artifacts of a Late Classic Mesoamerican Polity

Summary

Procurement, production, and distribution of raw materials loom large in discussions of prehistoric economies. Over the past three decades surface survey and excavations in and around the Late Classic polity of Cotzumalguapa revealed the presence of several obsidian dumps, the result of a large-scale lithic industry. These deposits contain production debitage from most phases of blade-core reduction but no nodules and relatively very little cortex, suggesting that obsidian came into Cotzumalguapa as prepared cores. Within the deposits cores occur in low frequencies and when found are generally nearly exhausted. The presence of both a primary prismatic blade-core and a secondary but significant bifacial and unifacial projectile point industry are indicated by both the debitage and the finished and near finished artifacts discarded in the obsidian dumps. As visual analysis suggests and geochemical analysis has confirmed the vast majority of the obsidian comes from the Guatemalan Highland sources of El Chayal and San Martin Jilotepeque; however, other sources are represented.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20965