At the closest habitable area to the quarry pit, the Maymeja workshop was identified. At this workshop, located downslope of the quarry pit, a 1x1m test unit was placed in the highest part of a gentle mound sloping gradually from the warm, sheltered foot of the cliff band to the edge of the bofedal (see context description in Section 6.4.1). This location, 600m downslope to the west of the quarry pit Q02-2, represents the closest location for stone working adjacent to quality grazing and a perennial water source. While the Chivay source Maymeja workshop [A03-126] is modest in size compared to obsidian workshops elsewhere in the world, many of the same analytical and sampling challenges were encountered that have been faced by researchers at larger workshops. The goal of this study was to document variation in reduction strategies and to attempt to determine if the variation was linked to cultural, temporal, or behavioral changes at the workshop. To be clear: the Q02-2u3 test unit is located inside of the site A03-126 workshop in a high density lithic locus labeled A03-330.

The Maymeja workshop at the Chivay source consisted primarily of flakes and cores, but a small fraction of other artifact types were found here. In the abundance of flakes and cores it may be estimated that the 1x1m unit, with a mean depth of 72cm, produced approximately 750 kg of cultural debris. As was discussed in Chapter2, a basic challenge of workshop studies is in capturing variability through the proper balance of sampling and detailed measures of artifact characteristics.

The 2004 lab analysis included taking several dozen measures on 1,544 artifacts from this pit alone (Section 5.7.2), and the focus was predominantly on analyzing complete flakes and complete cores. The principal morphological changes could be observed in the most well-represented technical classes by summarizing results and also by using clustering techniques and Principal Components Analysis on numerical measures.