| Contents |
Introducing war in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and the Andes / Andrew K. Scherer and John W. Verano -- War, violence, and society in the Maya lowlands / Takeshi Inomata -- War in the west : history, landscape, and classic Maya conflict / Andrew K. Scherer and Charles Golden -- Invasion : the Maya at war, 1520s-1540s / Matthew Restall -- Warfare in late/terminal formative-period Oaxaca / Arthur A. Joyce -- Aztec battlefields of eastern Guerrero : an archaeological and ethnohistorical analysis of the operational theater of the Tlapanec War / Gerardo Gutierrez -- Sacrifice at the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan and its role in regard to warfare / Ximena Chavez Balderas -- "I against my brother" : conflict and confederation in the south-central Andes in late prehistory / Elizabeth Arkush -- Making warriors, making war : violence and militarism in the Wari empire / Tiffiny A. Tung -- Taming the Moche / Luis Jaime Castillo Butters -- Warfare and captive sacrifice in the Moche culture : the battle continues / John W. Verano -- A materiality of opposition : on ancient Andean conflict and organization in northern Peru / George F. Lau -- The fall of Kuelap : bioarchaeological analysis of death and destruction on the eastern slopes of the Andes / J. Marla Toyne and L. Alfredo Narvaez Vargas -- The scope of Inca warfare as an imperial strategy of conquest and control / Dennis E. Ogburn -- Some concluding remarks : the view from outside / John Haldon. |
| Abstract |
With spears and arrows, atl-atls and slings, the people of the New World fought to defend themselves against European invasion and conquest. Over a century of scholarship on warfare has substantially enhanced our understanding of the scope and scale of violent conflict in Pre-Columbian America. Yet we still struggle to understand the nuances of indigenous warfare and its importance for native politics and society. This volume sheds new light on the nature of war in Mesoamerica and the Andes. Relying on methodological and theoretical developments in anthropological archaeology, bioarchaeology, and ethnohistory, the contributors highlight the particularities of warfare in indigenous societies and shed light on the commonalities of warfare in cross-cultural perspective. Their essays focus on place and the body as they explore the importance of captive-taking, sacrifice, performance, and political history in the conduct of war. Observers have debated whether the indigenous peoples of the Americas were distinctly noble or frightfully savage in their way of war. This volume shows that such polarized positions are unfounded. By focusing on the nuances of indigenous violent conflict, the contributors demonstrate that war in the Americas was much like war elsewhere in the ancient and modern world: strategic, political, bloody, socially productive, yet terribly destructive. -- from back cover. |
