Late Classic Maya Bone Tool Production and Use at Ucanal, Guatemala

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Bone tool workshops are rare in Mesoamerica, but both finished products and debitage suggest that human bones (includes images) were used alongside whitetail deer, turkey, and other species to produce tools such as needles and awls, as well as ornaments. The debris of Late Classic bone production was recovered from the Maya site of Ucanal, Guatemala, intermingled with carbon, lithics, and shell in the platform fill of an elite residential group. A zooarchaeological, isotopic, SEM, and ZooMS analysis of the species and the stages of production reveal which species were used for particular tool types and the types of catchments where the animals were acquired. The workshop faunal assemblage is then placed within the context of the fauna recovered to date by the Ucanal Archaeological Project to compare what was produced by the elite residential group with tools used and discarded in other elite and commoner households throughout the site. We also include examples of how animals were used in other ways at Ucanal, with multiple burials of dogs and birds and offerings of burned stingray spines, tooth beads, and marine shell ornaments, providing a unique look at the diversity in fauna used in one Maya city.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37009.0