Defensive Features and the Dynamics of Political Boundaries in a Maya Kingdom

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Supported by the National Science Foundation, Drs. Charles Golden and Andrew Scherer will lead a binational American and Guatemalan team of researchers in the archaeological investigation Precolumbian defensive systems in the Peten, Guatemala. Golden and Scherer work with Guatemalan archaeologist Lic. Rosaura Vasquez to direct the Sierra del Lacandon Regional Archaeology Project (SLRAP), a multidisciplinary collaborative research effort involving archaeologists, biological anthropologists, zooarchaeologists, hydrologists, and soils scientists. SLRAP investigators seek a holistic understanding of the socio-cultural and environmental processes surrounding the dynamics of borders, boundaries and frontiers as they developed in a region that during much of the period from AD 250 to 900 constituted the Maya kingdoms of Yaxchilan and Piedras Negras. To accomplish this they will pursue a program of both mapping and excavation of archaeological sites. The study region encompasses an area of approximately 450 km2 in the Sierra del Lacandon National Park of Guatemala, adjacent to the Usumacinta River and the modern border with Mexico. Based upon previous research it is hypothesized that: 1) During the period from about 250 BC to AD 350 the study region was dotted with a number of communities, none of which was able to politically dominate the other. Competition between these communities fostered conflict, and numerous small centers required defensive features to protect their inhabitants. 2) By no later than AD 350 a royal dynasty had been established at Yaxchilan, and over the next four and one-half centuries the expansion of the Yaxchilan kingdom, its political consolidation, and its territorial control eliminated rivals and obviated the need for defensive features except at the limits of the kingdom, where the Yaxchilan polity was in conflict with neighboring kingdoms such as Piedras Negras. 3) The collapse of dynastic rule at Yaxchilan (c. AD 810) was followed within about a century by the abandonment of settlements throughout the study region. As the kingdom fractured, conflict and competition between remaining political units resulted in the construction of new defenses and the renovation of older features.This research will enhance understandings of ancient Maya defensive features and warfare, and will contribute to the debate surrounding warfare as a cause or effect of political formation and collapse in the Maya region. As part of the broader efforts of the SLRAP to investigate the growth and development of the neighboring Maya kingdoms of Yaxchilan and Piedras Negras, this research will also enhance understandings of Precolumbian political and boundary formation processes more generally. Most significantly, this research contributes a long-term dynamic perspective to the cross-cultural and interdisciplinary study of warfare, borders, boundaries and frontiers, pertinent to the study of ancient and modern complex polities.The proposed research provides graduate and undergraduate projects for students in archaeology, physical anthropology, and environmental sciences in the United States, and Guatemala. Finally, this project has significant import for the threatened Sierra del Lacandon National Park of Guatemala. This research will provide park authorities, land-use managers, and local communities with data needed to develop viable impact assessment and resource management plans and models that can be used to evaluate natural and anthropogenic impacts on park resources. Indeed, many of these data will also be applicable throughout the Peten and elsewhere in the neotropics, where spikes in modern population and resource exploitation may not be sustainable.