Investigating the Principles of Fortification Construction

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This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. This project is investigating how people constructed and placed fortifications in the region of Mensabak, Chiapas, Mexico. The goal is to discern the underlying martial principles employed to construct Mesoamerican fortifications and build a more robust methodology for examining past warfare. Scholars throughout the world have debated the frequency of war in the past and impact of social conflict on the human experience. Yet, researchers are often constrained by the limits of written history. If scholars want to understand the impact of warfare on the human experience, then archaeologists must contribute to the discussion. Archaeology, as a branch of anthropology, is broadly concerned with culture and human activity in various times and places. Therefore, archaeologists have developed cross-cultural models to build analogies for interpreting past fortifications and artifacts of war. However, the recent cultural turn in military science and history highlights that context matters in warfare. To understand war, researchers must examine social conflict in particular cultural contexts, such as Europe during the Napoleonic Wars and Mesoamerica during Spanish colonization. This project investigates fortifications within the Maya cultural context. Dependence on cross-cultural models means archaeologists are often judging the functions of Maya fortifications based on patterns derived from other cultures. The proposed research aims at achieving balance between cross-cultural generalization and a focus on martial practice within particular cultural contexts. Although the case study is focused on Maya fortifications, the methods being developed will have broad application for understanding warfare.Defensive structures are some of the most important archaeological indicators of past warfare. Arguments for a peaceful past often hinge on the presence or absence of fortified sites. For example, the myth of a peaceful Maya civilization was shattered through multiple studies of fortifications from across the Maya region. This project will examine patterns in how people construct defensive architecture and processes that may affect archaeological detection of fortifications. Mensabak is an ideal region to examine past martial principles because it contains at least three Postclassic/Colonial period (AD 900-1697) fortified sites and ethnohistoric documents provide evidence of how the Maya practiced war. Mensabak's chronology is crucial for the application of ethnohistoric data because the documents under examination were written just after or while Mensabak's fortified sites were occupied. Intensive review of documentary sources provides data on how fortifications were constructed and what processes affect defensive structures from time of construction to their abandonment. Regional variation in fortifications will allow for the investigation of common patterns underlying Maya fortification construction. Two of the Mensabak regions defensive systems contain gaps and stop altogether. This project focuses on investigating if the Maya relied on slope in place of walls to defend sites. Moreover, does a predominance of wood as a building material account for gaps or lack of walls at many sites? These findings can help explain why a majority of Maya and Mesoamerican sites lack evidence of fortifications. Moreover, his archaeological methods can be applied and tested beyond Mesoamerica, since slope and preservation affect most archaeological sites. A major training goal of the proposed project is to integrate underrepresented students into the ongoing synergistic collaborative research at Mensabak. This project will be disseminated to the wider public through professional conferences and presentations open to the public. The results of this research will be posted on the open-access websites Mesoweb.com and tDAR.org. Overall, this project promotes a better of understanding of warfare and the human experience, while broadening the participation of underrepresented groups in academia and science.