Utilitarian Lithics as Commodities: Comparing Classic Period Specialized and Multi-craft Producers in the Maya Lowlands

Summary

This is an abstract from the "An Exchange of Ideas: Recent Research on Maya Commodities" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Economic studies in the Maya region have illustrated that the Classic period Maya utilized a variety of exchange networks to circulate commodities such as market exchange, redistribution, and gifting. The study of specific types of goods provides information on how different materials circulated through these exchange mechanisms in the past. We use case studies from two distinct areas of lithic production to compare the types of production and exchange of utilitarian lithic implements. Comparisons will be made between specialized production workshops, using data from biface production areas in western Belize (the Succotz and Manzanero Lithic Workshops), and from multi-crafting households where lithics were produced to use as part of the production of other material goods, using data from the Tres Hermanas District at the site of El Perú-Waka’ in the Petén region of Guatemala. Lithic production data in these cases illustrates variability in the ways that lithics were produced, exchanged, and used among the Classic period Maya, shedding light on the commodification and value of lithic implements during this period.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• An Exchange of Ideas: Recent Research on Maya Commodities   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35670.0