Not All Distance Is Kilometric… Obsidian Procurement and Exchange at Salinas de los Nueve Cerros and Cancuen

Summary

During the Classic period most lowlands cities imported obsidian from the El Chayal source, the other two major high quality outcrops (SMJ and Ixtepeque), being in the minority by comparison. Despite the fact that much has yet to be understood about the way this material was transported from the Highlands to the Lowlands, the recent discoveries at Cancuen of a single cache containing hundreds of complete prismatic cores demonstrated that this site played a major role in the production and export of El Chayal obsidian blades to the rest of the Lowlands during the Late Classic period. However, Salinas de los Nueve Cerros, located only 40 km from Cancuen, happens to be the only Lowland Late Classic site presenting a higher rate of SMJ than the El Chayal material. This data raises many questions about the possibility of Salinas being related to another exchange sphere than the classic Lowland Maya one, and enables us to discuss questions of contacts, and frontiers between these two major sites.

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): 20583