ABSTRACT
Ancient Mesoamerican chipped-stone tools made of chert and obsidian, as well as the quarries and outcrops from which raw material was extracted, have long been subjects of archaeological study (e.g., Breton 1902; Holmes 1900; Washington 1921). Culture historians of the early and middle decades of the twentieth century were drawn to Maya stone tools for three principal reasons. First, lithic artifacts are well represented in most archaeological assemblages. Second, they preserve well in nearly all depositional contexts, including the rainforest environments of the Pacific piedmont and the Maya lowlands. Third, archaeological investigations in North America and the Old World had demonstrated that lithic artifacts-like other objects of material culture-are subject to gradual change in technology and morphology. Thus, early Maya scholars hoped to use lithic artifacts as temporal and cultural markers, allowing diachronic comparison within and between sites and regions.
