Production in Urban Spaces: Lithic Production and Economic Organization at La Corona, Guatemala

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Studies of urban spaces have often relied on specialized production as a marker of urbanism. More recently, our understandings of production activities in urban environments have been used to understand the variety of activities that occurred within these spaces and the ways in which they reflect the structure of the urban environment, particularly their economic organization. This paper will focus on lithic economies as a lens through which to examine the economic variability in urban, peri-urban, and rural spaces. We use a case study from the central Maya lowlands, La Corona, Guatemala, to address these issues. More than 10 years of excavations at La Corona have explored areas in the urban, peri-urban, and surrounding rural region, providing a rich collection of lithic materials with which to evaluate the production, use, and distribution of lithics throughout these spaces. Analysis of manufacturing locations, scale of production and use, and acquisition of lithic raw materials can provide an understanding of the role of lithics in the economic organization of La Corona. This lithic analysis provides the opportunity to explore the economic variability and organizational differences throughout La Corona.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32035