If It Looks Like a Scraper? Identifying Artifact Function through Experimental Archaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Lithic artifact functions are often determined by the form of an artifact rather than by an analysis of functional characteristics. Some ways in which artifact function can be determined include experimental archaeology, use wear, and paleoethnobotanical analyses. Determining artifact function provides information about the types of tasks people performed, including activities involving materials which are unlikely to preserve in the archaeological record. Such data are valuable for our understanding of day-to-day activities and past economic organization. This poster addresses the function of four unifacial chert tools from the Classic period (AD 250–830) Maya city of El Perú-Waka’, Guatemala. Tool analysis employed includes experimental replication, use-wear analysis, and paleoethnobotanical analyses to ascertain potential functions. Preliminary analyses indicate that some of the tools were used for processing soft organics. Such materials rarely preserve in the lowland Maya region, making it hard to study these resources that were of economic importance. This study adds to our understanding of Classic Maya economies through examinations of the lithics that were used to process organic materials.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36110.0