Middle Preclassic Chipped Stone Caches at Ceibal and Holtun, Guatemala

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Ceremonial Lithics of Mesoamerica: New Understandings of Technology, Distribution, and Symbolism of Eccentrics and Ritual Caches in the Maya World and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

During the late Middle Preclassic period (700-350 B.C.) at Ceibal, common objects in ritual deposits in the public plaza shifted from greenstone celt caches to other artifacts, including obsidian prismatic-blade cores. Like greenstone objects, exhausted polyhedral obsidian cores deposited in cruciform arrangements along the east-west axis of the central E-Group plaza were used as symbols and markers of the center and four cardinal directions within the Maya cosmos. Nevertheless, eccentrics were not part of Preclassic behaviors at Ceibal. In comparison at Holtun Middle Preclassic period caches lack greenstone and focus primarily on obsidian cores, blades, and debitage with additional material including river cobbles and shell, sometimes in ritually charged numbers. Source analysis for the cached obsidian suggests possible restriction of El Chayal obsidian to elite and ritual sectors of the site. Like Ceibal, chipped stone caches at Holtun during the Middle Preclassic period were focused on the E-Group ceremonial plaza.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Ceremonial Lithics of Mesoamerica: New Understandings of Technology, Distribution, and Symbolism of Eccentrics and Ritual Caches in the Maya World and Beyond   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23650