Society’s Cutting-Edge Crafters: Lithic Commodity Production at Cotzumalhuapa

Summary

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

Lithic artisans were critical to society throughout the Americas prior to the introduction of iron by Europeans. On the Pacific Coast of Guatemala, where no local sources of chipped-stone imported obsidian was available, obsidian was used to meet social demand for cutting edges. Throughout time this demand was met by a mixture of importing finished tools and raw material which was manipulated by local artisans. During the Late-Classic Cotzumalhuapa imported vast amounts of obsidian which was converted into a variety of products. Primarily, obsidian was made into prismatic blades, the ubiquitous cutting tool of Mesoamerican society from the Middle Formative until after the Spanish Conquest. Crafters at Cotzumalhuapa also created a large amount of weaponry in the form of projectile or spear points. This paper discusses the technological typology of tools made at Cotzumalhuapa from data gathered at large five large obsidian dumps located throughout the site.

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): 37440.0