Twenty Years of Mesoamerican Obsidian Research at the EAF

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Elemental Analysis Facility at the Field Museum: Celebrating 20 Years Serving the Archaeological Community " session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Among the first materials compositionally analyzed at the EAF were obsidian objects from the Maya site of San José, Belize. Since then, we have analyzed tens of thousands of obsidian objects from Mesoamerica (primarily from the Valley of Oaxaca) as part of our study of the ancient Mesoamerican economy. Using these new analytical results as well as a comprehensive database of other sourcing studies for the region, we have documented large-scale shifts in the transport and acquisition of volcanic glass indicative of changes in political geography and transport routes between ca. 1600 BC and AD 1520. Here, we revisit the results of our prior network analyses using distance fall-off curves. These new analyses illustrate the role that political geography played in the distribution of obsidian in Mesoamerica, for instance, the selective acquisition of Pachuca obsidian by political allies of Teotihuacan during the early Classic or the role of the Tula and Chichén Itzá in the distribution of Ucareo obsidian during the Terminal Classic period. However, in common with our prior analyses, we find that obsidian was likely moved through a number of channels and routes in Mesoamerica, often independently of direct political control over production and distribution.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• The Elemental Analysis Facility at the Field Museum: Celebrating 20 Years Serving the Archaeological Community

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38010.0