Stone Tools and the Elite Political Economy at Epiclassic (A.D. 650-900) Xochicalco

Discussion

The stone tool assemblage from the elite zone of Xochicalco supports at least two interesting inferences relating to (1) the organization of its stone tool craft economy, and (2) the availability of obsidian raw material at the site. The production of stone tools appears to have been primarily organized and carried out in commoner workshops, not in the elite zone of the site. The elite artifacts do not reflect much production because they are predominantly (90%, N = 2,099) informal blade-derived tools and various formal tools. In PreColumbian Mesoamerica, pressure blades were snapped into smaller segments and used for many utilitarian and ritual tasks. As such, they represented the most important informal cutting tool for at least 2000 years (Hirth and Flenniken 2002). The use of blade segments as informal tools by Xochicalco’s elite is supported by the observation of use-wear on 43% (N = 348) of a sample of 830 of them. Since this sample was examined with a 10x hand lens, the real percentage of segments with use-wear is undoubtedly much higher.

The formal tools in the elite assemblage include pressure blade and bifacially derived projectile points, modified blades, bifaces, unifaces, a core, and a hammerstone that were all flaked or shaped into specific forms. Beads produced using lapidary techniques also represent formal implements. The remaining 10% of the assemblage is core and core rejuvenation artifacts (N = 130), flakes primarily indicating chert reduction (N = 15), and a few un-diagnostic artifacts (N = 87) consisting of flake fragments, chunks, and shatter (Table 6).

In contrast, collections from the commoner core-blade workshops excavated by Hirth (1995) are strikingly different. They have much lower percentages of informal and formal tools and a higher percentage of artifacts related to core rejuvenation (Hirth 2002). They also contain thousands of unidentifiable flake fragments, chunks, and shatter that are always ubiquitous in collections reflecting stone tool production. Finally, a high magnification study of blades from these workshops indicates that only 10% show evidence of use-wear (Costanzo 1997).

What is interesting about the core and core rejuvenation artifacts in the civic-ceremonial assemblage is that it reflects the same technology that is found in the commoner workshops. ⁶  Accordingly, limited core-blade production may have occurred in the elite zone. It is doubtful, however, that the quantity of production-related artifacts from this area is high enough to infer the presence of resident craftsmen. It is more reasonable to suggest that craftsmen from the commoner workshops occasionally went to the elite precinct to make blades for the elites. This would have been similar to the labor levies imposed in the commoners by Aztec nobles (Carrasco 1978; Hicks 1976; Zorita 1963) and in line with the precinct model of production that has been suggested for Classic period (A.D. 150-700) Teotihuacán (Spence 1981). ⁷  The percentages of the different types of core rejuvenation artifacts in the elite assemblage, however, are not the same as those in the commoner workshops so I believe that blades were probably not made in this part of the site.

Alternatively, the limited obsidian core and core rejuvenation artifacts in the elite assemblage may have been obtained in the marketplace. These artifacts could have facilitated specific uses because of their unique shapes (Figure 5, b, d, e, & i). ⁸  Research has revealed that the market was a firmly established institution at Epiclassic Xochicalco and probably was where most of the city’s citizens acquired the tools made in the city’s commoner workshops (Hirth 1998). The array of artifacts in the elite assemblage suggests the elites may have done the same.

Evidence for the production of the few large formal bifacial tools (Figure 7) at Xochicalco has not been documented at the site. It is possible that the handpicked collection strategy used during the Proyecto Especial Xochicalco missed the smaller flakes ⁹  generally associated with bifacial production. This seems unlikely, however, because measurements taken on 1,768 artifacts in the elite assemblage indicate that 19% (N = 328) of them have maximum dimensions of 2 cm or less. Artifacts from Xochicalco’s commoner workshops also do not indicate bifacial production.¹⁰ The working hypothesis is that these implements were made elsewhere and imported into Xochicalco (Hirth et al. 2000).

Consequently, the overall composition of the elite assemblage suggests that the Xochicalco elites provisioned themselves with obsidian tools primarily in the market or the exaction of tribute. This indicates that the production of stone tools at Xochicalco was an integrated system whereby commoner craftsmen supplied the needs of the entire society.¹¹ These needs were predominantly utilitarian; evidence for the production or use of ritual or status-related flaked stone implements is extremely limited.

The elite assemblage is also consistent with previous conclusions about the availability of obsidian at Xochicalco (Hirth 2002). A total of 2,331 flaked artifacts from the large elite area are small for an impressive site like Xochicalco. The hand picked recovery strategy used during the Proyecto Especial Xochicalco undoubtedly missed some flaked stone artifacts. However, even if only 10% of them were retrieved, then the elite zone would have had around 20,000 artifacts. This pales in comparison to the more than 500,000 obsidian artifacts retrieved from the commoner core-blade workshops.

Obsidian appears to have been scarce because of the distance it traveled to the site and technology that was used to reduce it. The majority of obsidian in the commoner workshops came from Ucareo, Michoacán (64.7%) and Zacualtipán, Hidalgo (21.1%), both about 200 km away (Hirth 2002:83). The elite assemblage also shows a predominance of Ucareo obsidian (68%, Table 2).¹² We know from the artifacts in the commoner workshops that obsidian arrived as partially reduced pressure cores, not large "macro-cores." This suggests that its movement across the landscape was restricted. Hirth (2002:88) has inferred that itinerant, blade-producing merchants traveling throughout central México may have brought these cores to the site. Besides making blades wherever they stopped, they also could have exchanged used cores that they longer wanted to reduce any further. This would explain why the core-blade technology at Xochicalco involved the reduction of small cores. Furthermore, the platforms of many cores were rejuvenated many times to extend their use-lives. This suggests obsidian was scarce and was intensively processed to produce as much cutting edge as possible. A general raw material scarcity, therefore, would be consistent with numerically limited assemblages of obsidian regardless of whether the users were elites.

Another thing worth considering is why there are so few flaked stone implements related to ritual or prestige. The assemblage has few impressive artifacts (Figure 6, Figure 8, and Figure 9) especially compared to those known from Teotihuacán (Parry 2002). This indicates that flaked stone implements were not a prominent medium of symbolic capital for the Xochicalco elites. This interpretation fits the inference of obsidian scarcity because large bifacially produced artifacts require a great deal of raw material. The constraints limiting the availability of obsidian at Xochicalco may be one good reason the elites were not involved in the production of obsidian artifacts that could have been used to reinforce their social status.

Endnotes

6. The artifacts in the commoner core-blade workshops excavated by Hirth (1995, 2002; Hirth et al. 2000) indicate that relatively small single facet cores entered the site and then underwent multiple platform rejuvenations in which they were resurfaced with pecked and ground platforms. This process produced numerous unique artifacts including core tops (Figure 5 b), split platform flakes, core section flakes (Figure 5 d & e), platform preparation flakes, and what are referred to as distal orientation flakes (Figure 5 i). The frequency and character of these artifacts represent a technology that is presently considered unique to Epiclassic Xochicalco.

7. Michael Spence has suggested that the evidence for stone tool production in the elite contexts Teotihuacán was conducted as a form of labor tax by commoner craftsmen who did most of their knapping in commoner workshops scattered throughout the city.

8. Some of the core rejuvenation artifacts in the elite assemblage show clear evidence of use-wear and/or retouch.

9. It is important to point out that bifacial thinning flakes are not always small. Regardless of their size, however, they also have distinct technological attributes that were identified on only a very small percentage of the artifacts from the elite zone and the commoner workshops.

10. Thousands of small flakes were collected during the excavations of Xochicalco’s commoner core-blade workshops by screening all the material through 1/8" mesh; few of the flakes reflected bifacial reduction (Hirth 1995).

11. The spatial organization of Xochicalco’s commoner core-blade workshops also may be consistent with the urban structure of the site. All four workshops are situated in separate areas that appear to have been occupied by distinct kin-groups (Hirth 1989). If so, then this may indicate that certain households in these larger kin units specialized in the production of certain items. Similar evidence of this organization has been reported for Teotihuacán (Sheehy 1992; Spence 1981) and may hold true for other areas of Mesoamerica. The nucleated grouping of larger kin units that maintained strong ties with hinterland communities may be one of the outstanding hallmarks of New World urbanism (Hirth 2000). This type of system may have also exerted a strong influence on how specialized production was spatially organized in Mesoamerican urban centers.

12. The neutron activation analysis of artifacts from the elite assemblage shows Otumba obsidian from the State of México as the second most prevalent type of gray obsidian. This is a sampling bias. We still do not know where the large bifacial artifacts at Xochicalco were made. Therefore, 15 biface fragments were selected for sourcing in order to begin exploring this issue (10 of these turned out to be made of Otumba). Given the percentage of bifacial artifacts in the assemblage, it is likely that a more stratified sample would have indicated that Zacualtipán obsidian was the second most prevalent variety in the collection.

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