Perspectives on ancient Maya bone crafting from a Classic period bone-artifact manufacturing assemblage (original) (raw)
Related papers
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2009
This paper explores the nature of utilitarian bone-artifact crafting from the perspective of an unusual assemblage of manufacturing debitage dated to the Terminal Classic. This large assemblage contains unprecedented quantities of debris from the production of utilitarian artifacts, primarily bone perforators (needles, pins, awls). The collection was recovered from Group L4-3, a small, non-elite, Late and Terminal Classic residential complex located adjacent to the central palaces and residences of the ruling nobility of the ancient Maya site of Dos Pilas, Petexbatún, Guatemala. This study evaluates the standardization of raw materials, methods, and finished artifacts of the assemblage based on criteria used in discussions of scale of production and craft specialization. These evaluations are used to explore whether the L4-3 bone crafters were part-or full-time specialists, whether they produced their products on a large or a small scale and for domestic or external consumption, and for whom they crafted these products. The continuous occupation of the L4-3 complex through the transition from Late to Terminal Classic, a time of social change, offers a rich background for this evaluation of Maya utilitarian bone-artifact crafting.
Bone, shell, and lithic evidence for crafting in elite Maya households at Aguateca, Guatemala
Ancient Mesoamerica, 2007
The site of Aguateca, Guatemala, was rapidly abandoned at the beginning of the ninth century A.D. (approximately A.D. 830), leaving a Pompeii-style assemblage scattered on the floors of elite residences. Horizontal excavation of these residences has revealed ancient elite activity and household-level craft-production areas, including in situ evidence for the manufacture of bone and shell artifacts using stone tools. Here, bone/shell-production sequences that identify artifact-crafting stages are combined with lithic microwear analyses using highpower microscopy that identifies lithic manufacturing tools. A combined distributional analysis of lithic manufacturing tools, bone and shell debitage, and finished products reveals the location and nature of bone/shell-artifact manufacture in the households of the Classic Maya elite. The evidence indicates that Aguateca nobility carried out part-time animal-product crafting, the specific nature of which varied among households. Household room-use distributions also hint that both women and men were involved in crafting most animal products.
Mayab, 2000
Extensive excavations of rapidly abandoned structures at the Classic Maya center of Aguateca have provided rich assemblages of complete and reconstructible objects. A particularly interesting result is the presence of objects related to scribal and artistic production in all rapidly abandoned elite residences that have been excavated. Although evidence of such activities is difficult to detect in gradually abandoned structures, researchers need to consider the possibility that a significant portion of elites engaged in scribal and artistic work in their houses.
The Life of Worked Bone: Preclassic and Classic Maya Faunal Remains from Procurement to Disposal
The complex society of the Maya developed major city centers throughout Guatemala and Belize and into parts of Mexico, Honduras, and El Salvador. During the Preclassic (1200 BC – AD 300), the ancient Maya underwent major social and political changes that affected many aspects of their daily life. From these changes, emerged a highly-stratified society with extensive trade connections, hieroglyphics, and power structures that visually and physically separated the general public from elites in the Classic (AD 300 – AD 900) period. Though the Classic period is commonly researched, to truly understand how the Maya developed into these independent political city centers, thorough research needs to be conducted within the formative period of the Preclassic. Previous investigations of the ancient Maya usually focus around architecture, ceramics, and burials, however faunal remains and bone artifacts can also provide valuable information on their culture. Bone artifacts are of interest here due to their understudied nature and how their different functions determined who used them, which in turn, influenced where they are eventually found. Understanding the role that bone artifacts play within this formative period can allow archaeologists to recognize craft specialization development and how these artifacts, through creation, usage, and ownership, established further stratification. An intensive study of several faunal assemblages will be conducted to determine potential trends of crafting, use, and disposal of bone artifacts. This research will span several sites across the Maya world, deriving material from both the Preclassic and Classic periods, with emphasis on their distribution, manufacture, context, typology, and use-wear. The results will help to establish if craft specialization is occurring within the Preclassic, and how these items can be used as determinates of class. The disposal of these artifacts can also impact our understanding of how a site is used; with various areas for workshops, part-time local productions, and/or as burials interred with faunal artifacts. Lastly, the relationship between art and tools can be explored through their faunal representations at these sites, and if they each played an equal role in the identification of social classes.
Ancient Mesoamerica, 2022
This study examines artifact production using lithic, animal bone, and shell materials at the lowland Maya site of Ceibal, Guatemala, to explore the emergence and societal role of early crafting specialists. During the Middle Preclassic period (1000-350 b.c.), ancient Maya society went through a critical transition to sedentary settlements, including the development of large-scale monumental construction endeavors for ceremonial activities, increasingly nucleated settlement patterns, and the differential control of prestigious objects. Excavations across Ceibal recovered one of the largest Middle Preclassic assemblages of lithic and faunal material to date. We examine these materials in order to understand the nature of their manufacturing processes, the association between lithic production and bone/shell processing for meat and artifact production, and compare these activities with evidence from other Middle Preclassic sites and from the later Classic period. We find that Middle Preclassic middens are often disturbed or incorporated into later construction episodes over many generations, making the identification of such activities difficult, although not impossible, to identify archaeologically. Evidence for crafting is often found near ceremonial structures where Ceibal's early elite would have been present, suggesting that they were closely involved in the production process.
This study presents the results of an investigation into fine-ware production in the eastern Maya lowlands during the Classic to Postclassic transition (ca. AD 800–1250), a period characterised by the collapse of the Maya dynastic tradition. A selection of fine-ware ceramics—Ahk'utu' vases and Zakpah ceramics—from various sites across Belize was examined by thin-section petrography and SEM-EDS analyses. The resultant compositional and technological data reveal that fine-ware production exhibited varying degrees of continuity and change in potters' choices of raw materials and manufacturing technologies. The most significant change occurred in craft organisation. Fine-ware production shifted from the coexistence of two ceramic traditions, which guided potters regarding the raw materials used and technical practices followed in making Ahk'utu' vases during the earlier phase of transition (ca. AD 800–900/950), to the dominance of one broad tradition with greater liberty accorded producers in their execution of Zakpah fine-ware production during the later phase (ca. AD 950/1000–1200/1250). Such a shift is argued to have been stimulated by a change and increase in the demands for fine-ware ceramics during the later phase of the transition, corresponding to the emergence and proliferation of a new elite stratum in the Maya lowlands.
Journal of Field Archaeology, 2017
This article examines Preclassic Maya ritual practices and craft production by means of a study of ritual deposits containing obsidian artifacts dated mostly to the late Middle Preclassic period (700-350 B.C.) at Ceibal, Guatemala. New ritual practices developed at Ceibal during this period, possibly through political interactions and negotiation involving emerging elites and other diverse community members. Common objects in ritual deposits in the public plaza shifted from greenstone celt caches to other artifacts, including those made of obsidian. The inhabitants of Ceibal engaged in various kinds of craft production, including the manufacture of obsidian prismatic blades. They also conducted public rituals in the Central Plaza, depositing exhausted polyhedral obsidian cores and other artifacts with symbolic significance in caches and as offerings in incipient elite burials and interments of sacrificed individuals. These cores clearly demonstrate the use of a sophisticated blade technology. Like greenstone objects, exhausted polyhedral obsidian cores deposited in cruciform arrangements along the east-west axis of the central E-Group plaza were used as symbols and markers of the center and four cardinal directions within the Maya cosmos. Public rituals were important for creating collective identities and for processes of political negotiation within the community. Emerging elites likely came to play an increasingly important role in public rituals as principal performers and organizers, setting the stage for later public events centered on rulers.
University Press of Colorado, 2015
This book is my second book about Ticul potters, and lays out the continuity and changes in production organization over the period of 1965 to 2008. It is one of the few studies that looks at contemporary potters through such a long period (43 years) documenting the changes in the social organization of potters and the spatial organization of their production units. The introduction lays out the theoretical and conceptual background of the work, and prepares the reader for the application of the work to the study of ceramic production in the prehistoric past. This book traces the history of potters and their production units for more than four decades. As a follow up to Social Change and the Evolution of Ceramic Production and Distribution, it focuses on a narrative history of pottery making families and their production units, and how they have changed between 1965 and 2008. Again, household production has a deep history in Ticul, but other types of production units have come and gone. Illustrated with over a hundred images of production units, the narrative indicates that the physical sizes of production units have gotten larger over time even though the mean number of potters per production over the same period has not significantly increased. Potters have intensified their craft by building structures to shield production from the damaging effects of rainfall and hurricanes and thus increased their production unit footprint.
Breaking the Mold: The Socioeconomic Significance of Metal Artifacts at Mayapán
Archaeometallurgy in Mesoamerica: Current Approaches and New Perspectives, 2013
In recent decades there has been much discussion among archaeologists about the transformative roles material objects play in human societies. Various scholars have focused attention on the ways that material culture is an integral part of social and economic systems through time, with considerable discourse centered on the role of specialized crafting in ancient societies (Apel