The Second Chapter: Further Analysis of Granite Ground Stone Tools from the Belize River East Archaeology Project, 2015–2022

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Ground Stone Studies in the Eastern Maya Lowlands" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Granite was a preferred raw material for ground stone tool production in many parts of the Maya Lowlands. However, granite outcrops are spatially restricted within the Maya Mountains of Belize, and access to this material was limited. The movement of raw and/or finished tools would have required various mechanisms of movement, trade, and exchange to obtain. We use handheld X-ray fluorescence to trace the distribution patterns of granite ground stone tools as they moved from source to deposition location in the Lower Belize Watershed. Here, we present new geochemical sourcing data on granite ground stone artifacts recovered by the Belize River East Archaeology (BREA) project since 2015. The chemical signatures of these artifacts add breadth and depth to our current understanding of granite provisioning at a regional scale. Further, we discuss the distribution of granite versus other raw materials used in ground stone tool production throughout Belize and outline a set of research questions needed to further explore the dynamics of the ground stone tool economy.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Recent Advances in Ground Stone Studies in the Eastern Maya Lowlands   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36609.0