Obsidian: Status Marker or Household Item? The Use of Obsidian throughout Time in Manabi, Ecuador

Summary

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

The use of obsidian in the Andes is widespread and constant starting during the Formative period. Through the morphological analysis of lithic artifacts recovered during excavations in northern Manabi, Ecuador, this poster reveals the importance of obsidian in the area and how it changed throughout time. The Matapalo site, the focus of this research, shows evidence of two settlements that date to different periods and present a significant quantity of stone artifacts collected in contexts associated with the Valdivia (1500–500 BCE) and Jama-Coaque (500 BCE–500 CE) cultural groups. These tools were created with various raw materials, including obsidian. Considering obsidian is not a local raw material, it likely arrived in the area through a trade network. This analysis, which uses a classification method based on morphology and the operational chain, seeks to determine the function of obsidian, the form it arrived on site, and the changes in procurement, production, and use patterns in the area through time.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36619.0