Valuing the ubiquitous: Resource availability and landscape value among the Classic period Maya of western Belize.

Studies of materials' value in past societies have examined a wide variety of causes for value including, but not limited to, labor, skill, access, cultural associations, and scarcity and abundance. This article examines how scholars can determine which of these causes of value relate to values of landscapes and the materials extracted from those locations, particularly for abundant materials. It draws on an archaeological case study of the availability of chert raw materials for making lithic, or stone, tools for the Late Classic period Maya of western Belize (600–900 CE). In western Belize, chert resources are common but distributed unevenly across the landscape. Despite the ease of access, chert was a valued raw material, and households relied on its extraction as a key economic activity. The economic logic behind resource value can be examined based on a lithic extraction and production area, Callar Creek Quarry. This article, based on excavations of quarry and household contexts and analysis of the resultant materials, finds that the widespread availability of chert resources in the Maya lowlands did not result in these resources being less valuable but that the skill added to the materials through extraction and production increased their value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]