Even though lithics in the Maya region have traditionally been relegated to appendices and tool-type lists, much has been done to move beyond this descriptive approach in the last decade. In this article we highlight general themes of lithic studies in the Maya region since 2011, including economic production and exchange, the role of lithics in ritual practice, and the use of previously understudied raw materials and lithic forms, such as ground stone. Employing a temporal scope that encompasses the Maya and their preceramic predecessors, we explore gendered patterns of research within lithic studies from a feminist perspective and discuss the impacts that gender disparities have on academic thought.

In embedded economies where multiple modes of production and exchange exist, artifact distributions in households alone do not reflect the strength of specific modes. We use a diachronic perspective tied to changes in political economies and artifact class densities standardized by excavation volume at the Maya site of Actuncan, Belize, to elucidate changes in the strength of individual production and exchange modes in the Preclassic and Classic periods. We focus on ground stone densities as a measure of grinding intensity across elite and common households. Data indicate that common households always ground more maize than elites, but intensity peaked in the Late Classic when tax and tribute demands and market exchanges were greatest. In the Terminal Classic, common household grinding intensity decreased by half as tribute burdens diminished, illustrating the impact of political hierarchies on household economies.

The discovery of a small portable grinding stone at Rach Nui in southern Vietnam provides significant new insights into regional Neolithic trade networks and ground stone technologies. Previous research held that the manufacture of stone tools took place near stone sources in the interior, along the Dong Nai and Be River basins, but the Rach Nui grinding stone comes from a Neolithic site in the Mekong Delta, approximately 80km to the south-east. This suggests that some manufacturing occurred away from raw material sources. Technological analysis indicates that the artefact was a portable tool for the polishing, maintenance and repair of ground stone adzes. Its discovery at Rach Nui may indicate the presence of specialist tool makers or itinerant traders. This research illustrates the complexity of Neolithic trading networks, and highlights the technological expertise that circulated alongside finished and incomplete objects.