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

在国家科学基金会的支持下，查尔斯·戈尔登博士和安德鲁·谢勒博士将领导一个由美国和危地马拉研究人员组成的两国研究小组，对危地马拉贝滕的前哥伦比亚防御系统进行考古调查。戈尔登和谢勒与危地马拉考古学家Lic。Rosaura Vasquez指导Sierra del Lacandon区域考古项目（SLRAP），这是一项涉及考古学家，生物人类学家，动物考古学家，水文学家和土壤科学家的多学科合作研究工作。SLRAP的调查人员试图全面了解在公元250年至900年的大部分时间里构成Yaxchilan和Piedras Negras玛雅王国的一个地区，围绕边界、边界和边疆动态的社会文化和环境过程。为了实现这一目标，他们将开展一项既绘制地图又挖掘考古遗址的计划。研究区域包括危地马拉拉坎顿山脉国家公园内约450平方公里的区域，毗邻乌苏马辛塔河和现代墨西哥边境。根据以往的研究，我们假设：1）在公元前250年至公元350年期间，研究区域点缀着一些社区，其中没有一个能够在政治上主宰另一个。 这些社区之间的竞争加剧了冲突，许多小型中心需要防御功能来保护其居民。2)不迟于公元350年，一个皇家王朝在亚克斯奇兰建立。在接下来的四个半世纪里，亚克斯奇兰王国的扩张、政治的巩固和领土的控制消除了对手，也消除了防御特征的需要，除了王国的边界，亚克斯奇兰政体与邻近的王国如皮德拉斯内格拉斯发生冲突。3)亚克斯奇兰王朝统治的崩溃（c。公元810年）之后，在大约一个世纪内，整个研究地区的定居点被遗弃。随着王国的分裂，剩余的政治单位之间的冲突和竞争导致了新的防御和旧功能的翻新。这项研究将提高对古代玛雅防御功能和战争的理解，并将有助于围绕战争作为玛雅地区政治形成和崩溃的原因或结果的辩论。作为SLRAP更广泛的努力的一部分，以调查的增长和发展的邻近玛雅王国的Yaxchilan和Piedras Negras，这项研究也将提高前哥伦比亚的政治和边界形成过程更普遍的理解。最重要的是，这项研究有助于战争，边界，边界和边疆的跨文化和跨学科的研究，有关古代和现代复杂的polities.The拟议的研究提供考古学，体质人类学和环境科学的学生在美国和危地马拉的研究生和本科生项目的研究提供了一个长期的动态视角。最后，该项目对受到威胁的危地马拉Sierra del Lacandon国家公园具有重要意义。这项研究将为公园管理部门、土地使用管理人员和当地社区提供必要的数据，以制定可行的影响评估和资源管理计划和模型，用于评估自然和人为对公园资源的影响。事实上，这些数据中的许多也将适用于整个Peten和新热带地区的其他地方，现代人口和资源开发的高峰可能无法持续。

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.