Thesis
If It Looks Like a Scraper: An Investigation of a Novel Lithic Tool Form from Waka’
Washington State University
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
2023
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000006375
Abstract
Lithic artifact functions are often determined by analysis of form alone. Artifact function can be determined through experimental archaeology, use-wear, and paleoethnobotanical analyses. Determining artifact function provides information about the types of tasks people performed, including activities involving materials which are unlikely to preserve in the archaeological record. Such data are valuable for our understanding of day-to-day activities and larger scale past economic organization. This thesis addresses the function a novel form of unifacial scraper from the Classic period (250 – 900 AD) Maya city of Waka’, Guatemala. I employed experimental replication, use-wear analysis, and paleoethnobotanical analyses to ascertain potential functions for the specific tool type. This study shows that these tools were likely intended to process soft organic materials such as maguey cacti, but in practice they were employed for a variety of tasks. Beyond investigating the function of a novel tool form, produced on chert, which is underappreciated in Maya archaeology, this thesis uses this information to comment on the nature of Classic period Maya economies. This research adds to broader ongoing reassessments of Maya economies, which are now recognized as more similar to our own economies than previously thought. I find that these scrapers were quotidian tools manufactured by specialists and exchanged through a commercial system, illustrating that Classic Maya economies were complex, multi-scalar, and commercialized.
Metrics
5 File views/ downloads
29 Record Views
Details
- Title
- If It Looks Like a Scraper
- Creators
- Garrett Dean Toombs
- Contributors
- Rachel A Horowitz (Advisor)John C Blong (Committee Member)Erin Thornton (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Department of Anthropology
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 174
- Identifiers
- 99901087515001842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis