Obsidian Blade Production, Social Inequality, and Agency at the Classic Maya Capital of Tamarandito

Summary

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

Archaeologists studying the Maya have traditionally considered obsidian to be a luxury good that was often tightly controlled by the elite during the Classic period. Archaeological evidence from the Classic Maya capital of Tamarindito in Guatemala challenges these long-held assumptions, however. At Tamarindito, multiple lines of evidence support the assertion that social and economic inequality existed between elites and so-called "commoners," but evidence for significant production of obsidian within at least two low-status households (one of which holds the majority of all obsidian recovered from Tamarindito to date) illuminates the role of agency and choice within non-elite households at Tamarindito and begs archaeologists to further rethink both top-down and bottom-up perspectives on Maya obsidian production.

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): 36616.0