Fifty Shades of Gray . . . Obsidian: A Tale of Supply, Demand, and the Ties that Bind at Xaltocan, Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Twenty Years of Archaeological Science at the Field Museum’s Elemental Analysis Facility" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In central Mexico, where obsidian was the primary tool stone used by Indigenous peoples, one can get a good sense of sources by separating green obsidian (from Pachuca) from gray obsidian (from Otumba, Ucareo, and several other sources). Compositional analysis can further clarify the gray sources. Over a decade ago, the Elemental Analysis Facility at the Field Museum began training archaeologists in the application of portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry to source obsidian. In collaboration with the EAF, we conducted a small study of 103 obsidian artifacts from Xaltocan, Mexico, dating from about 900 to 1700 CE. About half of these artifacts were green and half were gray, black, red, or brown obsidian that could not be linked to a known source without compositional data. For the present study, we returned to Xaltocan with improved instrumentation, a better sense of chronology, and a more substantial sample of 898 additional obsidian artifacts of which 99% are gray or other uncommon colors. Our findings demonstrate the stability of supply networks and markets well into the Colonial period as well as the homogenizing tendencies of the Aztec market system.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Twenty Years of Archaeological Science at the Field Museum’s Elemental Analysis Facility   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38057.0