Paperback - £53.00

Publication date:

27 September 2003

Length of book:

384 pages

Publisher

AltaMira Press

ISBN-13: 9780759102835

The understanding of warfare in ancient Mesoamerica has blossomed in recent years. In this volume, the authors use recent empirical studies to help us understand the patterns and nature of Mesoamerican warfare. Using evidence from ceramics, settlement pattern, epigraphy, ethnohistory, and ethnography, these projects define the martial nature of Mesoamerican societies and link it to ritual, political economy, and other cultural systems. The studies range from preclassic to post-contact and from Belize to Central Mexico. A comparison between this corpus and warfare studies in the American Southwest is also included. This volume will be of interest to Mesoamericanists and other archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians of ancient warfare.
In this volume, 20 archaeologists review decades of previous studies and explain the many kinds of conflict and the methods for recognizing them from material evidence. The chapters feature well-illustrated case studies derived from the author's excavations and from hieroglyphic inscriptions, pictorial evidence, historic documents, and ethnographic comparisons....Highly recommended.