E m bat t l e d B odi e s , E m bat t l e d Pl ac e s

War in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and the Andes

Dumba rton Oaks Pr e- Columbia n Symposia a nd Colloqu ia

Series Editors
Mary E. Pye and Colin McEwan

Editorial Board
Elizabeth Hill Boone
Tom Cummins
Barbara Arroyo
Embat tled Bodies, Embat tled Pl aces
War in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and the Andes

Andr ew K. Scher er and John W. Ver ano

Editors

Dumba rton Oaks R esea rch Libr a ry a nd Collection

Washi ngton, D.C .
© 2014 Dumbarton Oaks
Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Embattled bodies, embattled places : war in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and the Andes /
Andrew K. Scherer and John W. Verano, editors.
pages cm. — (Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian Symposia and Colloquia)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-88402-395-1 (cloth)
1. Indians of Mexico—Warfare—History—To 1500.
2. Indians of Central America—Warfare—History—To 1500.
3. Indians of South America—Andes Region—Warfare—History—To 1500.
4. Indians of Mexico—Antiquities. 5. Indians of Central America—Antiquities.
6. Indians of South America—Andes Region—Antiquities.
I. Scherer, Andrew K. II. Verano, John W.
f1219.3.w37e49 2014
980'.01—dc23
2013011916

General editors: Mary E. Pye and Colin McEwan

Art director: Kathleen Sparkes
Design and composition: Melissa Tandysh
Managing editor: Sara Taylor

Volume based on papers presented at the Pre-Columbian Studies symposium “Conflict, Conquest, and the
Performance of War in Pre-Columbian America,” held at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection,
Washington, D.C., on October 14–15, 2011.

Jacket Illustrations: (top) Confrontation between Moche supernatural creatures (Donnan and McClelland
1999:118), drawing by Donna McClelland; (middle) Battle scene from the Bonampak murals (detail from
Room 2, south wall), illustration by Heather Hurst and Leonard Ashby, © Bonampak Documentation Project,
2001; and (bottom) Aztec Codex Mendoza, folio 64r; (back) Moche combat scene showing one warrior
striking another and knocking off his helmet, while another grabs his opponent by the hair, drawing by
Donna McClelland.

www.doaks.org/publications
 con t en t s

Preface and Acknowledgments | vii

1 Introducing War in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and the Andes | 1
Andrew K. Scherer and John W. Verano

2 War, Violence, and Society in the Maya Lowlands | 25

Takeshi Inomata

3 War in the West: History, Landscape, and Classic Maya Conflict | 57

Andrew K. Scherer and Charles Golden

4 Invasion: The Maya at War, 1520s–1540s | 93

Matthew Restall

5 Warfare in Late/Terminal Formative-Period Oaxaca | 117

Arthur A. Joyce

6 Aztec Battlefields of Eastern Guerrero: An Archaeological and

Ethnohistorical Analysis of the Operational Theater of the Tlapanec War | 143
Gerardo Gutiérrez

7 Sacrifice at the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan and Its Role in Regard to Warfare | 171
Ximena Chávez Balderas

8 “I against my brother”: Conflict and Confederation in the South-Central Andes

in Late Prehistory | 199
Elizabeth Arkush

9 Making Warriors, Making War: Violence and Militarism in the Wari Empire | 227
Tiffiny A. Tung

10 Taming the Moche | 257

Luis Jaime Castillo Butters

11 Warfare and Captive Sacrifice in the Moche Culture: The Battle Continues | 283
John W. Verano

12 A Materiality of Opposition: On Ancient Andean Conflict and Organization

in Northern Peru | 311
George F. Lau

v
 13 The Fall of Kuelap: Bioarchaeological Analysis of Death and Destruction
on the Eastern Slopes of the Andes | 341
J. Marla Toyne and L. Alfredo Narváez Vargas

14 The Scope of Inca Warfare as an Imperial Strategy of Conquest and Control | 365
Dennis E. Ogburn

15 Some Concluding Remarks: The View from Outside | 385

John Haldon

Contributors | 403
Index | 409

v i c on ten ts
 pr e face a nd ack n ow l ed gme n t s
W arfare has been a staple of philo­
sophical debates even before there was the
formal study of anthropology. Simplistic readings
of Jean Jacques Rousseau would come to engender
the notion of the “noble savage,” seeing humanity
as more peaceable in the distant past, a perspec-
tive easy to apply to communities that did not
leave written records. Perhaps the best known Pre-
Columbian example was the myth of a nonbellig-
erent Classic Maya society organized around cer-
emonial centers filled with priests who whiled away
their days preoccupied with astronomical obser-
vations and calendrical calculations. This myth
proved to be remarkably persistent until the dis-
covery of the Bonampak murals and the decipher-
ment of Maya writing upended this misconception.
Our perspectives continue to evolve with new data
and new prisms through which to view this most
fundamental of human activities.
The present volume contributes much to these
ongoing debates and is based on the symposium,
“Conflict, Conquest, and the Performance of War
in Pre-Columbian America,” held at Dumbarton
Oaks on October 14–15, 2011. While warfare has
been touched upon in previous symposia, this
was the first meeting to concentrate solely on the
topic. Symposium organizers Andrew Scherer and
John Verano, together with former director of Pre-
Columbian Studies Joanne Pillsbury, ably negoti-
ated this complex theme to focus on Pre-Columbian
parallels for certain practices, in particular captive
taking, human sacrifice, violence as ritual, and war-
fare as statecraft. They assembled a cohort of investi-
gators who brought together new information from
settlement archaeology, GIS analysis, and human
bioarchaeology; their specialized analyses offer
fresh approaches and insights into Pre-Columbian
prehistory. I would like to thank all the contributors
for their excellent presentations, which were the
subject of lively debate and engagement by sympo-
sium attendees, and for their final written submis-
sions. We thank Eugenia Ibarra of the University of
Costa Rica for her presentation, but her contribu-
tion was not available for publication in the volume.
The organizers are to be commended for crafting
a multidisciplinary approach to address the per-
formance of warfare, its uses, and its effects; the
symposium included the comparative insights of
historian and archaeologist John Haldon, the sym-
posiarch of “War­­fare in the Byzantine World,” held
the previous year at Dumbarton Oaks. The timeli-
ness of the theme is apparent across disciplines, and
we will undoubtedly see future explorations on it.
There are many individuals to thank in the
organization and execution of this symposium
and volume, which took place during a moment of
transition for the Pre-Columbian Studies program.
I would like to thank the director of Dumbarton
Oaks, Jan Ziolkowski, for his support and coun-
sel. I am also grateful for the contributions and
v ii
 suggestions of the board of senior fellows, led by
Elizabeth Boone, including Barbara Arroyo, Tom
Cummins, Charles Stanish, Gary Urton, and David
Webster, as well as the current program direc-
tor, Colin McEwan. As there was a full house for
the symposium, we are especially thankful to the
facilities and event staff of Dumbarton Oaks. Pre-
Columbian program coordinator Emily Gulick
Jacobs once again excelled with her superb orga-
nizational skills. She was aided by Michelle Young,
Susannah Italiano, Kathleen Lane, Hilary Olcott,
Jane Padelford, and postdoctoral associates Reiko
Ishihara-Brito and Alexandre Tokovinine. The
symposium was enhanced by two concurrent exhi-
bitions. Bridget Gazzo developed a critical presen-
tation highlighting Moche ceramic imagery and
the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan with Capturing
Warfare: Enemies and Allies in the Pre-Columbian
v iii pre face a n d ac k n ow l e d g m e n ts
World, while the museum offered Lasting Impres­
sions: Body Art in the Ancient Americas examining
the uses of adornment in cultural identity, prepared
by Miriam Doutriaux. In addition, we are deeply
indebted to two anonymous reviewers who offered
constructive and insightful critiques for improving
the volume.
Finally, we are the beneficiaries of the talented
publications department led by director Kathleen
Sparkes and art and archaeology managing editor
Sara Taylor. We thank them as well as copyeditor
Sarah Soliz and designer Melissa Tandysh for their
unstinting efforts, which have helped assure the
quality of the final outcome.
Mary E. Pye
New World Archaeological Foundation
Brigham Young University

Introduction: Offensive and Defensive
Strategies
I n a 1525 letter to the spanish king,
Hernando cortés reported what he had heard
about the K’iche’ and Kaqchikel maya from spanish
veterans of the first invasion of guatemala:
They have done much harm to the spaniards who
are there, and to the [native] friends, their allies,
for the country is very rough and there are many
people, and they are very bellicose and bold in
war [belicosa y ardida en la guerra], and have
invented many offensive and defensive strategies
[géneros de defensas y ofensas], making pits and
many other methods for killing horses, in which
many have died (cortés 1983:272).1
The “many offensive and defensive strate-
gies” of the maya in the 1520s–1540s are the topic
of this chapter. we cannot, of course, simply
accept cortés’s analysis, shared widely among his
t 4
Invasion
The Maya at War, 1520s–1540s
m at t H e w r e s ta l l
compatriots, that maya resistance to spanish inva-
sion succeeded due to native bellicosity and cun-
ning. i therefore suggest a set of alternative factors,
while still recognizing the maya capacity for cre-
ative war-making.
These factors are grouped into two categories.
The first is innovation: to what extent did the maya
“invent” strategies and tactics (or “types of defenses
and offenses,” to translate cortés’s phrase literally)?
some of the ways in which the maya fought in this
period were innovative responses to new condi-
tions. but many appear to have been traditional
strategies, tactics, and practices that were applied
unaltered or slightly adapted from Pre-columbian
times. Few, if any, are unique to the history of war-
fare. Thus, how the maya fought in these wars is
often unsurprising, recognizable, even predictable.
yet details of maya fighting are relatively unstud-
ied by mayanists and virtually unstudied for the
spanish conquest period.2
The second category is the “landscape of war”
(scherer and golden, this volume): to what extent
93
 figure 4.1
Map of the Maya area, highlighting the four regions studied here and showing toponyms mentioned in the chapter.
(Map by Matthew Restall.)

94 re sta l l
were the patterns and outcomes of Spanish inva-
sions—and Maya responses to them—determined
by local landscapes, natural and built? In order to
propose some answers to that question, I have cho-
sen to examine four distinct regions where Maya
fought Spanish or Spanish-led invaders before 1550
(Figure 4.1).
Where, When, and What: Four Regions
The first region is highland Guatemala, specifi-
cally the valleys that made up the three kingdoms
of the K’iche’, Kaqchikel, and Tz’utujil. These ex­­
perienced two massive Spanish-Nahua invasions,
one led by Pedro de Alvarado in 1524–1526 and the
other by his brother Jorge in 1527–1529. Pedro died
two decades later in northern Mexico (Figure 4.2),
leaving behind a reputation as a man quick to vio-
lence; his assault on the highlands underscored
that infamy, and only after five years of devastating
warfare was a permanent Spanish presence estab-
lished in Guatemala. Sources on the war include
sixteenth-century written accounts by Spaniards,
Nahuas, and Mayas, as well as visual sources cre-
ated by Nahuas (see Restall and Assel­bergs 2007).
The second region is the Chontal Maya king-
dom of Acalan-Tixchel (or Tamactun, as its inhab-
itants called it). According to its own community
history (the Title of Acalan-Tixchel, see Restall
1998:53–76), Tamactun in the fifteenth century
stretched from Tabasco to the Usumacinta to
Chetumal Bay but by the 1520s comprised seventy-
six villages in the Yucatan’s southwest corner.
The kingdom received Spanish expeditions under
Cortés in 1525 and Alonso Dávila (or de Ávila) in
1530 (with further Chontal–Spanish contact later
in the century). The kingdom experienced some
tension and violence in 1525 and 1530 but no war-
fare; neither side opted to mount an attack. The
Tamactun case thus offers a contrast to the other
three. Tamactun gradually became a nominal
part of colonial Yucatan without having been con-
quered; it flourished in this state of ambiguity into
the seventeenth century before gradually fading
into a forgotten frontier.
The third region is northern Yucatan, where
the Maya fought Spanish incursions for thirty
years—from the coastal attacks on the Hernández
de Córdoba and Grijalva expeditions (1517 and 1518)
to the crushing of the so-called Great Maya Revolt
in the northeast in 1547. In between, the Montejo
family led a series of three invasions beginning
in 1527 and culminating in the founding of a col-
ony in 1542, centered on Tihó (renamed Mérida).
The Spanish presence would prove to be perma-
nent, but the colonial (and postcolonial) boundary
would continue to fluctuate, sometimes dramati-
cally, until the turn of the twentieth century. The
“Conquest of Yucatan” was thus protracted and
complex, featuring numerous instances of Maya
warfare that I have barely touched upon here. My
sources are a combination of published and unpub-
lished Spanish accounts and colonial-era docu-
ments written in Yucatec Maya (the latter of which
are translated in Restall 1998).
The fourth region is Belize. The small polity
of Chetumal, the larger one of Dzuluinicob, and a
smaller one centered on Tipu all roughly covered
what is today central and northern Belize. They faced
Spanish visits and assaults in 1528 under Montejo,
in 1531–1532 under Dávila, and in 1543–1544 under
the infamous Pacheco cousins. The last of these
incursions left a string of putatively colonial towns
along the Belizean river system between Bacalar
and Tipu, but they were subject to the Spaniards
at Bacalar more in theory than in practice. As in
Tamactun, the Spanish never settled Belize, the
Franciscans were largely absent, and the long-
term impact of conquest efforts was demographic
decline. In the pockets of Belize where Christianity
did take root, “it was veritably left to its own devices”
(Graham 2011:105).
A century after the Pacheco invasion, Belize
had a greatly reduced, but thriving, Maya popula-
tion, with no Spaniards there or within a hundred
miles. For the pre-eighteenth-century Spanish,
Belize (or “Walix”) remained nowhere, neither
Yucatan nor Guatemala, “neither here nor there,”
“liminal, elusive, shifting” (Graham 2011:107). By
the same token, the Maya of Belize did not write
in the colonial period—neither in Spanish nor
Invasion 95
 figure 4.2
Pedro de Alvarado, as depicted at the moment of his death by a Nahua artist in the 1550s. In addition to the Spanish
gloss, a sun glyph identifies Alvarado by his Nahuatl nickname, Tonatiuh (Sun). He is also given two features
typical of native depictions of Spanish conquistadores—both often missing from Spanish renderings, especially
later ones. One is the bushy beard; the Spanish ability to grow a full beard was noteworthy to native observers, and
the difficulties of shaving during conquest campaigns meant that conquistadores tended to sport beards, despite
their being unfashionable in Europe at the time. The other feature is Alvarado’s skirted doublet; he is not shown in
the full armor that Spanish painters tended to give the conquerors. (Drawing by Matthew Restall, after the Codex
Telleriano-Remensis [original manuscript in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris].)

alphabetically in their own languages (Mayas in
Yucatan and highland Guatemala did both)—and
so we have no indigenous sources for this region. (I
thus rely on Spanish accounts from the archives in
Seville, many of them quoted in Jones 1989; see also
Graham 2011).3
In historiographical terms, this chapter is in­­
tended as a modest contribution to a recently emerged
school of study, the New Conquest His­tory. In the
last two decades, the New Conquest History has
dramatically reoriented our perspectives on the
wars of invasion and conquest in sixteenth-century
Mesoamerica, partly through a careful analysis of
documents in native languages and partly by min-
ing the archives for multiple Spanish and indig-
enous viewpoints.4 Although I have previously
worked with some of the sources I am using here
(e.g., Restall 1998; Restall and Asselbergs 2007; also
see Restall 2003; Restall and Fernández-Armesto
2012), I am only now considering whether a specific
focus on Maya warfare in the 1520s–1540s might
tell us something new about the Spanish conquest
and sixteenth-century Mesoamerica. In addition,
the chapter’s setting within the context of a volume

9 6 re sta l l
(and originating symposium) of studies that mostly
explore Pre-Columbian patterns using archaeologi-
cal evidence prompts this question: What patterns
of Pre-Columbian warfare help us to better under-
stand Maya responses to invasion in the sixteenth
century, and, vice versa, how do those responses
shed light on earlier patterns?
Case Study: An Evil Plan
In April of 1524, Pedro de Alvarado wrote a letter
to Cortés. Alvarado was in the captured K’iche’
Maya capital of Utatlán in the recently invaded
Guatemala Highlands; Cortés was in Central Mex­
ico awaiting news of the conquest expedition that
had left six months earlier.
Alvarado described how, upon entering K’iche’
territory, he had been forced to fight a series of open
battles. Alvarado’s expedition comprised a com-
bined force of Spaniards, Nahuas, and other Meso­
american allies—similar to the even larger force
that would be led by his brother a few years later
(and illustrated by the participants from one Nahua
town; Figure 4.3). After one major encounter, Pedro
de Alvarado entered the K’iche’ town of Quetzalte­
nango (Xelajub’), finding it completely deserted. Six
days later “a great multitude of people” surrounded

figure 4.3
The Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, painted by Nahua artists in the sixteenth century to depict their town’s
involvement in the defeat of the Aztec empire (left side) and their dominant role in the successful conquest of
highland Guatemala in the late 1520s (right side). (This version of the lienzo has been digitally restored by the
Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala City; reproduced with the permission of the Universidad
Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala City.)

Invasion 97
9 8 re sta l l
the town (Restall and Asselbergs 2007:31). Realizing
he was about to be trapped and besieged, Alvarado
broke out and again engaged the K’iche’ armies.
The Maya then surrendered and invited Alvarado
into their capital of Utatlán (Q’umarkaj; Figure 4.4).
But the surrender was a trick. Alvarado’s
description of the site as a well-designed trap is
detailed—he was keen to show how devious the
K’iche’ were and to justify his subsequent actions—
and worth quoting at length:
When the lords of this city realized that their
people were defeated, they made an accord with
everyone in the land, convening those of many
other provinces, and giving tribute to their ene-
mies and recruiting them so that all might come
together and kill us. And they agreed to send
an envoy to tell us that they wished to be good,
and that once again they gave obedience to the
Emperor, our Lord; and that I should enter this
city of Utatlán, where they afterwards brought
me, thinking that they would lodge me inside
it, and that once we were encamped, one night
they would set fire to the city and there burn us
all, without possibility of resistance. In truth
their evil plan would have come to pass but
that God our Lord could not allow these infi-
dels to be victorious over us. For the city is very
strong indeed, and has but two entrances—the
one of thirty some stone steps, very steep, and
the other a causeway made by hand, much of it
already cut, so that that night they might finish
cutting it away and then no horse could escape
into the country. As the city is very dense and
the streets very narrow, there is no way we could
have endured it without either suffocating or else
falling down the precipices when fleeing from
the fire. As we rode up and I could see inside,
and how large the fortress was, and that once
inside it we would not be able to take advantage
of the horses because the streets were so narrow
and walled in, I determined at once to clear out
of it onto the plain—although for their part, the
lords of this same city advised against it, telling
me to sit and eat, and that I could go later, so as
to gain time to carry out their plan (Restall and
Asselbergs 2007:31–32).
The “evil plan” was foiled, but only just. Alvara­­
do’s forces fought their way out of Utatlán and
attacked the K’iche’ warriors, “chasing them around
the countryside and setting fire to it” (Restall and
Asselbergs 2007:32). Alvarado then resorted to a
tactic that he later justified as a punishment to fit
the crime: he trapped the two K’iche’ kings with
offers of peace and friendship and then, in the cen-
tral plaza of Utatlán, “in order to ensure the good
and tranquility of this land, I burned them, and
ordered this city to be burned and reduced to its
foundations, for it is a very strong and dangerous
place that more resembles a thieves’ den than a set-
tlement” (Restall and Asselbergs 2007:33).5
What was the Maya perspective on the bat-
tle for Utatlán? A K’iche’ account of the war, pre-
served in a colonial document known as the Title
of C’oyoi, emphasizes how proud the K’iche’ were
of the “mortar and limestone buildings” of their
“fortified capital,” its “stone walls and court-
houses,” and how “the soldiers of the great captain,
don Pedro Albarado [sic] . . . came and quickly

figure 4.4
Catherwood’s Utatlán, as published in John Lloyd Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and
Yucatan (1841). Although labeled “Santa Cruz del Quiché” (the name of the nearby colonial town), this rendering
of Utatlán by Frederick Catherwood appears to be fairly accurate and was probably copied from Miguel Rivera
y Maestre’s drawings published in the 1834 Atlas guatemalteco (see Babcock 2012:3, 12–13; Carmack 1981:265–267,
278–279). By the 1520s, Utatlán’s platforms, plazas, and stone buildings covered the flattened top of the steep-sided
hill (shown by Catherwood as only a few core structures, labeled “A. Palace and Place of Sacrifice”). It was accessible
only by a western staircase down to the river (not shown) and a southeastern causeway (gone by the 1830s and not
properly shown here). The drawing illustrates how the landscape, and K’iche’ modifications to it, made Utatlán an
ideal site for a fortified settlement and why Alvarado feared its potential for ambush.

Invasion 99
 figure 4.5
Tecúm, on the Guatemalan half-quetzal or fifty-centavo banknote, styled as a “national hero” (Tecún Umán Heroe
Nacional). (I am grateful to W. George Lovell for sharing his crisp example of the currency.)

brought down all the stone buildings” (Carmack

1973:282, 301–302).6
The C’oyoi version does not mention the am­­
bush tactic. But it does take us inside Utatlán in
the weeks before Alvarado reached the town and
in a fascinating passage describes the prebattle
feting of Tecúm, the K’iche’ general (and grand-
son of K’iqab’, the founder of the kingdom; Figure
4.5): “For seven days he was carried on the shoul-
ders of the K’iche’ among their houses, carried in
feathers and precious stones, anointed in black and
yellow, when he was glorified and carried through-
out the fortified capital, the great lord Tecúm, the
adelantado and captain of the K’iche’, for whom
they performed a great song and dance” (Carmack
1973:282).7 The account goes on to further describe
the songs and dances of flutes and drums, the pro-
cessions in the town and to a sacred place where rit- figure 4.6
ual bloodletting was performed, and the gathering Detail from the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan,
of an army of eighty-four hundred warriors from showing Utatlán as marked by a stone structure
all the corners of the kingdom (listed by toponym). and a burning K’iche’ ruler. (Reproduced with
The description of the subsequent battle centers on the permission of the Universidad Francisco
the fate of Tecúm, who cut the head off Alvarado’s Marroquín, Guatemala City.)
horse and was in turn stabbed by the conquistador
and then trampled by “the trotting horses of the
Spaniards in the plains”—a personification of the

10 0 re sta l l
 figure 4.7
The Lienzo de Tlaxcala, depicting the defeat of Maya defenders by Tlaxcalan warriors in full battle regalia,
assisted by a Spanish conquistador on horseback. (Drawing by Mareike Sattler, after the image in the 1864
Chavero manuscript.)

battle not paralleled in Spanish sources (Carmack
1973:283, 303).8
The death of Tecúm and the burning of the
kings brought large-scale K’iche’ resistance to an
end. Both were variously reported and remem-
bered in Spanish, Nahua, K’iche’, and Kaqchikel
accounts (Restall and Asselbergs 2007:33, 65,
72–73, 98, 105; also see Maxwell and Hill 2006).
Tecúm has been appropriated by Guatemalans
at various levels, including that of the state (see
Figure 4.5). But despite his modern rebirth as
a “national hero,” it was the executed kings, not
Tecúm, who were most remembered at the time.
(Tecúm is absent from accounts by Alvarado, Díaz,
and other conquest-era Spaniards.) The burning
of the kings was predictably criticized as exces-
sive by the Dominican firebrand Bartolomé de Las
Casas, who alleged that it was Alvarado’s gratu-
itous retaliation for not being given enough gold
by the K’iche’ rulers (“and so he had them burned
alive, with no further guilt or trial or sentence”
[Restall and Asselbergs 2007:72]). The Kaqchikel

Invasion 101
 stated that the kings “were burned by” Alvarado
because his “heart had not been satisfied by war”—
a reference probably more related to the conquis-
tador’s demands for gold and other tribute items
than his bloodthirstiness (Restall and Asselbergs
2007:105). When the Nahuas of Quauhquechollan
painted their cartographic narrative of the 1527–
1529 invasion of the highlands (see Figure 4.3), the
king-burning had become a symbol of Utatlán—
almost an emblem glyph (Figure 4.6; Asselbergs
2004:153, 156).
The Title of C’oyoi’s account of the battle for
Utatlán also credits the role played by the many
Nahua allies, “the Yaki people, the great mili-
tary lords accompanying Alvarado . . . the Eagle
and Jaguar warriors” (Asselbergs 2004:282, 301–
302). Nahua and Maya accounts generally tend
to recognize the crucial allied roles in both inva-
sions of Guatemala (Figure 4.7). Tens of thou-
sands of Nahuas (including Aztecs) and other
Mesoamericans outnumbered the few hundred
Spaniards both in 1524–1526 and 1527–1529, which
has long been recorded in text and image but only
recently fully acknowledged in the historical lit-
erature (see Asselbergs 2004; Lovell and Lutz n.d.;
Matthew 2007, 2012:60–131; Restall and Asselbergs
2007; and the same point applies to Yucatan, see
Chuchiak 2007).
The contrast between indigenous records of
Nahua roles in the Guatemalan wars and the highly
muted references in Spanish accounts is perhaps
unsurprising. But it is a clear example of the efficacy
of syncrisis—that is, the use of multiple genres,
texts, and authors in the examination of any aspect
of Spanish conquest history, including Maya war-
fare. With a brief case study in hand, we now turn
to three examples of Maya strategies evidenced by
these varying, often contradictory, sources.
The full array of strategies and tactics employed
by the Maya in the 1520s–1540s—from warfare-
avoiding strategies to tactics leading to military
victory—would require (and still awaits) a book-
length study. I have chosen to briefly analyze three
of them here: one, the strategy of diplomacy and
intelligence; two, the tactic of urban ambush; and
three, the tactic of staked horse pits.9
102 re sta l l
The Strategy of Diplomacy and Intelligence
The Maya strategy of diplomacy and intelligence—
put into effect through the deployment of spies or
the taking of diplomatic initiative, largely for the
purposes of gathering information—would today be
called intelligence assessment. It was a strategy some-
times designed to avoid war, sometimes designed to
win war. Pre-Columbian patterns of warfare were
part of larger traditions of interaction, including
long-distance trade and peaceful political engage-
ment. The sending and receiving of high-ranking
ambassadors is an important feature of monumen-
tal texts in Pre-Columbian Maya cities. That history
helps to explain why Maya leaders were keen to gar-
ner information about the Spaniards, how they did
it, and why they used that information to dispatch
diplomatic missions into Spanish-held territory or to
meet invading expeditions. Grant Jones (1989:14–22)
suggests that in the seventeenth century, Maya emis-
saries from Tipu and Petén Itzá unilaterally sought
peaceful accommodation with the Spaniards, their
diplomatic initiative motivated by a reading of tra­
ditional calendrical cycles. The Itzá strategy was thus
one of war avoidance. In the early sixteenth century,
however, Maya diplomatic initiatives seem not to
have been part of a strategy of surrender as much as
one of warfare: the intention was either to gain intel-
ligence so as to better prepare for war or to avoid war
altogether while also retaining autonomy.
Spanish ignorance of the terrain, especially
in the early conquest decades of the 1520s–1540s,
sometimes allowed Maya diplomatic initiatives
to take the form of freely offered guides. When a
Spanish–Nahua expedition under Cortés entered
Chontal territory from the west in 1525, guides were
sent to meet them and lead them quickly through
Tamactun and across its eastern borders. The king,
Paxbolonacha, tried in vain to avoid meeting them
or to host them in his capital of Itzamkanac. But
Paxbolonacha resisted an offer from the captive
Aztec emperor, Cuauhtémoc, to mount a con-
certed attack on the Spaniards (Restall 1998:63–64,
2003:147–157), survived twenty days of offering
crushing hospitality to the visitors, built a bridge to
help them cross one of the region’s many rivers, and
had his warriors guide the expedition successfully
into neighboring Cehach territory. Paxbolonacha’s
actions should not just be seen as a response to
unwelcome visitors; they were also a triumph of
diplomatic initiative.
Guides often had more hostile intentions; when
Montejo and Dávila landed on the eastern Yucatec
coast in 1528, guides helped split the expedition into
two, led them far apart, told each party that the
other was dead, attacked both, and drove them out
(Archivo General de las Indias, Patronato 1, 1; Jones
1989:26–28). In northern Yucatan, too, Spanish ex­­
peditions were frequently misled. More often than
not (and not surprisingly), freely offered Maya
guides or emissaries laden with gifts and supplies
for the Spaniards were spies for their own leaders or
were assigned the dangerous task of leading Spanish
forces into ambushes. By the time of the third
Yucatec invasion of 1540, the Montejos had come to
rely entirely on veterans of previous invasions, pref-
erably bilingual Nahuas (Chuchiak 2007). Symbolic
of the Spanish distrust of Maya interpreters is
the fact that a favorite intermediary of Montejo’s
(according to other conquistadores) was an African
slave named Marcos, who spoke Nahuatl, Maya, and
Spanish (Archivo General de las Indias, Justicia 300,
3; Restall 2009:17, 114).10
A slightly different example of the strategic
and tactical use of diplomacy at the onset of the
conquest period is the pair of ambassadorial ex­­
peditions sent by the K’iche’ and Kaqchikel to
Mexico in 1522. The two kingdoms were fierce
rivals, having waged sporadic warfare against
each other since the Kaqchikel had broken away
from the K’iche’ to create their own kingdom
fifty years earlier. So, one imagines that in 1522
the two kingdoms put their differences temporar-
ily aside in the interests of gathering intelligence.
According to Cortés, whom the Maya envoys met
in Tuxpán, they had been “sent by the lords of
those cities to offer themselves as vassals and sub-
jects” of the Spanish king (Cortés 1983:184). That,
at least, was what Cortés told the king; Charles
may have believed it, but no doubt both Cortés and
his Maya counterparts understood that a more
complex political dance was in motion. For the
Maya, the 1522 embassy had specific precedents: in
1509 the highland Maya had received a large Aztec
embassy, and again a decade later Moctezuma
sent envoys to inform the Maya of the arrival of
the Spaniards (Restall and Asselbergs 2007:1–4).
Cortés’s response was to send an expedition under
Pedro de Alvarado. But as we saw earlier, the
K’iche’ were waiting for him.
The Tactic of Urban Ambush
The Maya tactic of the urban ambush was intro-
duced previously with the examples of Quet­
zaltenango and Utatlán. Simply put, the ploy was
this: the Maya would evacuate their own urban
center or town and the villages leading to it, lure
the invaders into the town, and then attack them.
Sometimes limited fortifications or barricades were
thrown up to direct the invaders into the town cen-
ter, and often messengers were sent to them with
food and invitations to spend the night as honored
guests. Sometimes the Spaniards were encour-
aged or obliged to spend weeks, even months, in an
increasingly besieged Maya town.
Spaniards preferred to battle on the open plains,
where they could deploy their horses and use their
Nahua (or Maya) allies as arrow fodder. The urban
ambush turned the horses into a disadvantage and
the Maya town into a dangerous maze of unfamiliar
streets. For good reason, then, Spaniards feared and
fulminated against the urban ambush tactic. By the
same token, they often suspected it and were able to
foil it. Gonzalo de Alvarado (a cousin of the con-
quistador brothers) summarized the K’iche’ urban
ambush technique succinctly: “We were received in
peace, under a treacherous plan to kill us” (Restall
and Asselbergs 2007:52).11 When the Maya com-
bined tactics—diplomatic initiative as a means to
set the urban ambush—Spaniards were furious.
Bernal Díaz described in detail how the invaders
were almost caught in the Utatlán ambush because
Pedro de Alvarado responded to the K’iche’ peace
overtures “with much love, not understanding
the cunning they were employing” (Restall and
Asselbergs 2007:65).
Invasion 1 03
 The Yucatec Maya at Chetumal success-
fully used urban ambush twice, seeming to per-
fect the tactic after their first experience. In 1528,
they tried first to fortify and defend Chetumal
from Montejo, then let him in and attacked him
in the town before finally offering peace, food, and
guides—if he left the area. When the Spaniards
returned under Dávila three years later, they found
the town deserted but stocked with some sup-
plies. The Spaniards took the bait, settled in Chet­
umal (which they renamed Villa Real), only to find
themselves surrounded and under siege for a full
year. An attempt to escape west was hampered by
treacherous guides and repeated (and varied) uses
of the urban ambush technique. Retreating back
to Chetumal/Villa Real with most of their horses
(eight out of thirteen) killed and twenty-five of the
original forty Spaniards dead, maimed, or sick,
the ex­­pedition again fell under siege.
With escape by land impossible, the besieged
survivors eventually managed to flee by canoe
down the coast of Belize and were harassed by
hostile warriors for the first day of the journey. It
then took them an astonishing seven months to
travel the length of the Belizean coast to Puerto
de Caballos in Honduras, a journey described
in heroic and epic terms by Spanish survivors—
terms repeated by colonial chroniclers and echoed
by Robert Chamberlain (1966 [1948]:119–124; also
see Archivo General de las Indias, Patronato 1, 1;
Graham 2011:128–130; Jones 1989:29–40).
The Spaniards faced no Maya attacks—their
enemies were the sea, the cays, the unsuitability
of river canoes for transporting horses and heavy
supplies, and the lack of large coastal settlements.
But, as Elizabeth Graham (2011:129) suggests, the
Spaniards surely suffered systematic Maya attempts
at sabotage. They relied on Maya prisoners as row-
ers, but the rowers swam or ran off whenever they
could. Their canoes were frequently swamped with
water or overturned, so that guns were ruined and
swords lost. Maya guides clearly knew the terrain,
yet led them to poorly stocked settlements some-
times several days’ march inland. Viewed from
the Maya perspective, the 1532–1533 journey down
the coast of Belize was a successful application of
1 04 re sta l l
the tactics that typically were designed to lead to
urban ambush: feigned friendship and coopera-
tion, the use of guides and porters (or rowers) to
lead Spaniards into traps or away from major set-
tlements, and slow attrition of supplies and sup-
port through sabotage and flight. In the end, the
journey did not end in an ambush; presumably,
no site close enough to the coast was suitable. But
ambush was also not necessary. The goal was to be
rid of the Spaniards, and it was preferably accom-
plished without the loss of Maya life and property
that accompanied, for example, the 1524 battle
for Utatlán—or the 1532 battle at Chichén Itzá, to
which we now turn.
The protracted conquest of northern Yucatan
featured various incidents of urban ambush,
although they have not been clearly described
as such by historians. The most dramatic, large-
scale example took place in Chichén Itzá in 1532.
Although Chamberlain (1966 [1948]:171) notes that
“the Maya employed extremely effective cautious
and well-planned blockade and siege methods” at
Chichén Itzá and at Chetumal in the same year,
the general tenor of his account follows that of the
conquistadores themselves and of early Spanish
chroniclers. The Spaniards are portrayed as brave
and long suffering, the Mayas bellicose and treach-
erous (Chamberlain 1966 [1948]:134–149), and that
description has more or less remained the conven-
tional narrative.
The basic story is as follows: shortly after Mon­
tejo the Younger’s forces landed on the Yucatec
coast in 1532, leaders of the Chel and Pech poli-
ties capitulated and gave Chichén Itzá to Montejo
to settle (Figure 4.8). Montejo renamed it Ciudad
Real and asserted that the Spaniards had thereby
“settled a city from which to go out and conquer the
country,” in the later words of participant conquis-
tador Blas González (Archivo General de las Indias,
Patronato 68, 1, 2; also transcribed in Chamberlain
1948:533). When the local population ceased bring-
ing corn, and the Spaniards were attacked by “a
great quantity of Indians” upon leaving the city
to forage for food, the invaders protested that the
Maya had revolted. As one colonial Spanish account
put it: “A great multitude of Indians were called up
 figure 4.8
Landa’s castillo at Chichén Itzá rendered in a bird’s-eye drawing (Landa 1566:fol. 48v). (Original manuscript
[MS #9-5353] in the Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid.)

Invasion 1 05
 figure 4.9
Warriors at Chichén Itzá, based on the drawings made by Frederick Catherwood of the friezes on the walls of the
Great Ballcourt; although the friezes were carved in the Terminal Classic period, and Catherwood’s drawings were
made in 1841 and often partially imaginative, they nonetheless give us some sense of what Maya warriors looked like
as they amassed against the Spaniards in 1532. (Drawing by Matthew Restall.)

and thus quickly surrounded the Spaniards, who
were surprised to be encircled by so many enemies”
(Cárdenas Valencia 1937 [1639]:17).12 Things did not
go “as planned,” Fray Diego de Landa (1566:xiii)13
later explained, because Montejo had “made ene-
mies,” the “city” was “very far from the sea,” and
“the Indians, feeling it to be a hardship to serve for-
eigners where they had been the lords, began to be
hostile on all sides” (Figure 4.9).
The theme of Maya revolt was further devel-
oped in Chamberlain’s conquistador-based narra-
tive. He credited Montejo with selecting a site of
“religious importance,” “hallowed ground” for the
Pech, Chel, and other Maya, thereby ensuring their
acceptance of Spanish lordship, which was fur-
ther confirmed when Maya workers started con-
structing buildings for Ciudad Real in the center
of Chichén Itzá (Chamberlain 1966 [1948]:135–136).
A common trope in Spanish narratives of conquest
and revolt is that of the bad apple, the hate-filled
deceitful “Indian” who spreads the rot of rebellion;
in this case, it was Nacon Cupul, a young leader of
the Cupul polity, who feigned submission and then
seized Montejo’s sword in a failed assassination
attempt. This was the signal for the revolt to rise up.
The Spaniards “staunchly held on for some months”
against a “swelling tide of hatred” (Chamberlain
1966 [1948]:140, 143, 145) before breaking out of
Chichén Itzá and being chased west.
Viewed in the larger context of the Maya
fondness for the urban ambush tactic, it seems
clear that the “settling” of Chichén Itzá was a well-
planned Maya trap. While the Spaniards were
founding their new capital, the leaders of the sur-
rounding polities were organizing their siege. The
Maya selection of Chichén Itzá, centrally located
and uninhabited, meant none of the capitals of the
surrounding polities were occupied; preparations

10 6 re sta l l
for a coordinated attack could proceed. Feigned
friendship lulled the Spaniards and facilitated
the gathering of information. The Maya account
in the Pech titles does not detail a well-planned
ambush, but nor does it support the Spanish claim
of conquest and revolt. In the Title of Saci-Sisal, for
example, the foreigners simply arrive—twice—kill
some local lords, and then “the Spaniards were
attacked by all the Cupul people here” (see Restall
1998:116).14 Whether the Nacon Cupul incident was
apocryphal or not,15 whatever signaled the start of
the siege, the Spaniards did not face a spontaneous
uprising but a well-coordinated and fully devel-
oped strategy of warfare.
An important factor here is the question of the
Maya “city.” In this chapter, I have avoided calling
Maya sites cities, allowing city to appear only in
my translations of Spanish sources. This choice is
not just a nod to David Webster’s (2002:150–159)
skepticism regarding the term (see also Babcock
2012:19–23, 310–315), but a way of highlighting how
Spaniards made assumptions about Maya cen-
ters as capital cities; as a result of their assump-
tions, they were more easily drawn into urban
ambushes, failing to see where the important and
vulnerable Maya centers of population really lay.
Montejo and his compatriots saw Chichén Itzá as
a Maya city (cibdad or ciudad) to be turned into
a Spanish one—not just a city, but the city, the
capital of a new Spanish province. Their view was
based partly on its scale and its stone buildings
and partly on the fact that it was presented to them
by local lords as a site that was sufficiently central
and significant to be their settlement. But Chichén
Itzá was not a city as the Spaniards understood it,
certainly not in the 1530s; it was pilgrimage site, a
ceremonial center, shared by polities whose capi-
tal towns were scattered in far more modest sites
across northern Yucatan.16
Seeing the 1532 battle for Chichén Itzá in this
way casts new light on the 1524 battle for Utatlán.
It, too, should probably not be seen as the capital
“city” for which Alvarado thought he was fighting.
Certainly it was a capital in many ways—the cer-
emonial, political, religious, and economic center
of the K’iche. But it did not contain the homes of
all elite families and many of their subjects, as a
Spanish city would have. This interpretation jibes
with Alvarado’s description, with the site’s size and
location—highlighted by Catherwood’s admittedly
stylized drawing (see Figure 4.4 and its caption)—
and with the modern archaeological discovery that
most of greater Utatlán’s population did not live in
the fortified center (Babcock 2012:269, 289–298). It
helps explain why the K’iche’ hoped to contain the
invaders there in 1524, protecting their residential
towns while they mobilized for the urban ambush,
just as the Yucatec Maya were able to do in Chichén
Itzá (and to an extent at Chetumal) in 1532.
We have already seen that the urban ambush
had a psychological element, a tactic of decep-
tion read variously by the Spaniards as treach-
ery and rebelliousness. One additional example
of psychological warfare is worth mentioning—
an incident in the Kaqchikel capital of Iximche’
in 1524 (Figure 4.10). It took place at a moment
that was nonviolent, yet pregnant with the poten-
tial for urban ambush. It was never mentioned by
Alvarado or in any other Spanish account of the
war. Its only source is the Kaqchikel account of
Alvarado’s initial stay in Iximche’, and it was writ-
ten in Kaqchikel Maya. “Tonatiuh was happy when
truly he entered Iximche’,” described the Kaqchikel,
matter-of-factly.
Tonatiuh slept in the Tzupam palace. The next
day, the [Spanish] lord, having dreamed that a
frightening number of warriors came to him
where he slept, sent for the [Kaqchikel] lords:
“Why will you make war on me? Is there some-
thing I am doing to you?” he said. “It is not at all
that way; it is just because many warriors have
died here. It is they that you now see in the pit that
is in the middle of them,” said the lords (Restall
and Asselbergs 2007:106).
The Tzupam palace was on the square dubbed
Plaza C by archaeologists; it was either the skull-
rack building attached to one of the plaza’s temples
or the large palace on the plaza’s other side (see
Figure 4.10). To date, archaeologists have found
forty-eight skulls where the skull-rack building
Invasion 107
 figure 4.10
Plan of Iximche’, as it was in 1524 when Pedro de Alvarado spent a bad night in one of the buildings on Plaza C;
its hilltop location, with ravines on three sides, made the Kaqchikel capital (like the K’iche’ capital of Utatlán)
highly defensible and conducive to the execution of an urban ambush. (Drawing by Matthew Restall, after plans
in Guillemin 1967:28 and Schele and Mathews 1998:301; see also Babcock 2012:292–293.)

stood. Tzupam is Kaqchikel for “skull-rack” (tzom-
pantli in Nahuatl). The Kaqchikel term for pit, used
in the passage just quoted, is jul (hul in the original
orthography; Otzoy 1999:57), the same word used
to denote the deadly horse pits (jul kej) to which
we shall turn shortly. In other words, Alvarado was
deliberately and successfully housed in a building
full of ghosts in order to give him nightmares. The
next night, the Kaqchikel account wryly observes,
the Spaniard slept in a different building.
Did the highland Maya invent the tactics used
at Utatlán and Iximche’ in specific response to
Alvarado’s invasion? Did the Yucatec Maya cre-
ate new strategies and tactics to expel Spaniards
from Chetumal and Chichén Itzá in 1532? Surely
not, for it seems unlikely that the urban ambush
was invented in response to these invasions. Sites
like Utatlán and Iximche’ were surely chosen to
be centers of some sort or another because they
were not only fortifiable but conducive to planned
ambush. Indeed, the larger pattern of site selection
and fortification goes back at least a millennium in
the Usumacinta River basin and Maya Highlands
(Hassig 1992; Scherer and Golden, this volume;
Webster 1999). To the north, the Yucatec Maya could
not build towns on high hilltops or beside ravines
because the environment lacks such features. It is
thus tempting to imagine places like Chichén Itzá,
Itzmal, and Tihó as sprawling urban centers, rather
like modern cities. That idea is probably wrong,
however; Yucatec sites were surely as fortifiable and
as conducive to urban ambush as were highland
Guatemalan ones—in their own ways. The heart of
Chichén Itzá obviously served the purpose in 1532.
And one can imagine Mayapan, with its outer walls
and inner maze of structures and smaller walls,
creating a deadly setting for the kind of complex
ambush-oriented warfare the Maya were to choose
in the 1520s–1540s.
Nor do we need to look only to large sites for
examples of ambush. Indeed, one infamous village
ambush took place during the conquest decades:
in a lull between Spanish invasions of Yucatan—
in 1536—the Cocom rulers trapped and slaugh-
tered an embassy of Xiu nobles in the village of
Otzmal. The Xiu party was crossing Cocom ter-
ritory in order to conduct a rain-bringing cere-
mony at Chichén Itzá. The details differ between

10 8 re sta l l
various Spanish and Maya accounts, but the con-
sensus was that dozens died in a surprise attack
in the village center. Gaspar Antonio Chi later
wrote that “Nachi Cocom treacherously killed
more than forty lords of the province of Mani, who
were passing through his province on a pilgrim-
age, unarmed and under safe passage—beheading
and putting out the eyes of Ah Kulel Chi, who was
the most senior of them” (Archivo General de las
Indias, México 105, 4b).
Only a few survived to tell the tale. “May it be
remembered!” declared one Xiu account.17 Ah Kulel
Chi was Gaspar Antonio Chi’s father. A boy at the
time of the killings, Gaspar Antonio grew up to
be Interpreter General of the Spanish colony, giv-
ing him the opportunity as well as the motive to
promote the memory of his father’s ambush. He
likely influenced the Spanish view of the Otzmal
ambush—he worked for a while for Diego de Landa
(1566:xiv), for example, who described it as an act of
Cocom treachery—and ensured the tale would sur-
vive. But since the sixteenth century, the massacre
has tended to be viewed as a final manifestation of
long-standing dynastic feuding and regional war-
fare between the Xiu and Cocom, and the impli-
cation of accounts like Landa’s is that colonial
rule, the Pax Hispania, ended such violence. Xiu-
Cocom rivalry was certainly real and deep rooted,
but Otzmal can also be seen in the context of deep-
rooted Maya warfare practices. No doubt the Xiu
and Cocom had been ambushing each other for
centuries, in which case the surprise is not what the
Cocom did in Otzmal but that Ah Kulel Chi and his
Xiu relatives did not see it coming.
The Tactic of Staked Horse Pits
The final Maya tactic that I wish to highlight, one
deployed as part of a strategy of violent defen-
sive warfare, is the technique of staked horse pits
(Figure 4.11). The evidence for such pits comes
from highland Guatemala; both Spanish and
indigenous sources on the wars of the 1520s men-
tion the Maya use of sharpened wooden stakes set
into the ground. Sometimes these were used in
conjunction with larger barricades (as Pedro de
Alvarado details), sometimes they acted as a type
of barricade or roadblock (as depicted in the Lienzo
de Quauhquechollan), and sometimes they consti-
tuted the business end of a horse pit. Staked horse
pits are described most often, either because they
were used often, because their impact was graphi-
cally violent, or because horses were much loved
by the Spaniards and much hated by the Maya.
Probably all three explanations are valid.
The Maya account of the war against Pedro de
Alvarado in the Annals of the Kaqchikels describes
how “trenches were dug, pits for horses were made,
with stakes to kill them. Truly war was waged
again by the people. Many Castilians died, and also
many horses died in the horse pits” (Restall and
Asselbergs 2007:108). Spanish testimony confirms
the use of horse pits; in his letter to the king quoted
at the beginning of this chapter, Cortés gives par-
ticular mention to this tactic. The most detailed
Spanish account is by Bartolomé de Las Casas, and
it is worth quoting in full:
Then they invented some pits in the middle of
the roads, into which the horses would fall and
their innards be pierced through with the sharp,
fire-hardened stakes with which these pits were
full, the pits being covered with grass and weeds
so that there might appear to be nothing there.
But only one or two times did horses fall into
them, because the Spaniards learned to watch
for them. But in revenge, the Spaniards made it
law that all the Indians of any sex and age that
might be taken alive would be thrown into the
holes. And thus pregnant and nursing women,
as well as children and old persons and any oth-
ers that they might take, were thrown into the
pits until they filled them, pierced through by the
stakes, which was a very sore thing to see, espe-
cially the women with their children (Restall and
Asselbergs 2007:73).
It is typical of Las Casas to turn the topic in
support of his argument; his rhetorical strategy is to
admit no ambiguity at all, so he must assert that the
Maya were obliged by Spanish hostilities to dig pits
Invasion 1 09
 figure 4.11
Detail from the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, showing about half of the twenty-one staked pits that are depicted
on the right side of the manuscript. (Reproduced with the permission of the Universidad Francisco Marroquín,
Guatemala City.)

and that mostly innocent, defenseless Mayas died in
them anyway. But Las Casas may have had a point: a
Nahua source—the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan—
confirms that Mayas were also victims of their own
staked pits (Figure 4.12).
The first third of the lienzo, which covers
events in Mexico, contains no staked pits. But the
portion that depicts events in Guatemala shows
twenty-one of them—suggesting this was a Maya
tactic, not a Mexican one. In addition to the pit
showing what seems to be a Maya woman impaled
on stakes (see Figure 4.12), one pit contains a horse
(see upper right corner of Figure 4.11), and three
show Nahua warriors dying in them (one of whom
is being rescued). The grim novelty of these pits for
the Nahua invaders helps explain their frequent

110 re sta l l

figure 4.12
Detail from the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan,
showing what appears to be a Maya woman
perishing in a staked pit. (Reproduced with
the permission of the Universidad Francisco
Marroquín, Guatemala City.)
depiction in the lienzo. We have some evidence
that the Maya elsewhere covered staked pits in
conjunction with defensive fortifications and bar-
ricades—at Chetumal in 1528, for example (Jones
1989:28). But I have yet to find evidence from
Yucatan of staked pits aimed specifically at horses
or of anything close to the systematic use of such
pits in highland Guatemala in the 1520s; environ-
mental factors may have made all the difference,
as Yucatan’s shallow top soils were not amenable
to rapidly dug deep holes. I suspect, therefore, that
this tactic was an innovation—if not entirely new,
then adapted from older techniques—developed
by the highland Maya in specific response to the
Alvarado-led invasions and the horses that came
with them.18
Conclusion: Landscapes of War
The scholars who have contributed to what they
call “the spatial turn” have not primarily been his-
torians or anthropologists, but most of us would
agree that “no social or cultural phenomenon can
be torn from its spatial context” (Warf and Arias
2009:7). As scholars of the Pre-Columbian Maya
have shown, the Maya did not view and wage war in
a uniform manner; differences of environment and
regional history led to the development of “diver-
gent narratives of warfare” (Scherer and Golden,
this volume). So how does this heterogeneity help
to explain the regional differences in how the Maya
responded to Spanish incursions and the differing
outcomes of those invasions?
Parts of the Americas on the eve of contact with
the Spaniards hosted “frequent warfare” between
the various polities and ethnic groups (Arkush, this
volume). But in regions such as Central America
and the south-central Andes, warfare was not sim-
ply caused and defined by ethnic or linguistic dif-
ferences; rather it seems to have been woven into
the fabric of social relations (Arkush, this volume;
Ibarra Rojas 2011). This inseparability was arguably
characteristic of the K’iche’ and Kaqchikel king-
doms; the former was birthed by a regional revolt
against the latter, founded by a warrior-king whose
grandson was the K’iche’ general in the 1520s. The
highland Maya had trained and equipped veteran
warriors, developed efficient ways to mobilize them,
fortified towns, and tested tactics such as urban
ambush—tactics whose element of surprise surely
made them more potentially effective against new-
comers than old enemies. Considering the degree
to which warfare characterized K’iche’–Kaqchikel
relations, and indeed their very identities as king-
doms, it would have been surprising had they not
chosen to fight the invaders. Ironically, the K’iche’–
Kaqchikel rivalry became a factor that permitted
the Spaniards to divide, conquer, and establish a
permanent presence.
By contrast, the Chontal Maya of Tamactun
had no single archenemy against whom they needed
to fortify their towns to remain in a state of mili-
tary preparedness. Their tactics did not form a
Invasion 1 1 1
 strategy of deadly warfare (no urban ambushes or
staked pits), but one of war avoidance. The king-
dom’s recent history of half-hearted expansion
seems to have been designed to create a buffer zone
of weak neighbors around them, with “frenemies”
like the Cehach to the east. The Cehach had, accord-
ing to Chontal claims, been defeated in the past by
Tamactun and paid them tribute. But in the 1520s
their subordination must have been nominal (they
skirmished with Cortés’s expedition when it entered
their territory, led by Chontal warrior-guides, in
1525), while at the same time they posed little threat
to Tamactun.19
The greatest threat to Tamactun prior to 1519
came from the Aztec empire, which already had
established an outpost at Xicalango on Tamactun’s
western edge. The Aztecs would probably have
absorbed Tamactun as a tributary province in the
1520s had the Spaniards not arrived (Gutiérrez, this
volume, indirectly suggests how that might have
unfolded). The Tamactun decision to accommo-
date the Cortés expedition, supply it generously,
and wait patiently for it to leave hints strongly at
how an Aztec army would have been received. The
irony of Tamactun’s vulnerability from the west is
that the same modesty of resources—material and
human—that would have prevented its sustained
resistance to Aztec or Spanish attacks likewise
spared it such conquests: Tamactun was hardly
worth attacking. In the end, the Nahua at Xicalango
did go to war against the Maya—but against the
Maya of northern Yucatan, as part of the Montejo-
led invasion.20
A similar lack of resources did not spare the
Maya of northern Belize from full-scale attack;
indeed, the Pacheco-led plunder and slaughter of
1544 may have resulted in part from the invad-
ers’ realization that long-term exploitation was
not viable. But it did spare the region the sus-
tained Spanish incursions that were necessary to
colonization. Graham (2011:136) puts her finger on
how the two factors worked together: “environ-
mental conditions in Belize” meant it was never
“inviting” to Spanish settlers, while “Maya strate-
gies . . . made it difficult for Spaniards to get a sense
of what they could exploit in Belize, or how.” The
112 re sta l l
natural environment was thus a factor, but not the
primary determinant, in the outcome of invasion
wars. Yucatan is flat, with few rivers and no moun-
tains, whereas invaders faced complex and varied
highland topography in the other three regions
studied here. That did not mean that the Yucatan
was more easily conquered. But unlike Tamactun
and Belize, its abundant human resources drew
Spaniards repeatedly, while its accessible bay (the
bay of Campeche, compared to Belize’s barrier
reef ) and landscape helped the Spaniards to stay in
Yucatan’s northeast.21
Scholars of Pre-Columbian warfare often have
to ask why polities waged war (Scherer and Golden,
this volume; Inomata, this volume). In the case of
the sixteenth-century Maya, the answer may seem
obvious: because they were attacked by outside
invaders. But the Tamactun case shows that Maya
leaders sometimes sought and exercised the option
of not fighting. This option was made possible by
the interrelated factors of Tamactun’s location, its
surrounding environment, and Spanish attitudes,
in contrast to highland Guatemala, which was a
landscape of low-level warfare before the Spaniards
arrived and was turned into one of devastating con-
flict by the Alvarado-led invasions.
We would be wrong to assume that Spaniards
chose violence any more than Mayas did; we can-
not simply throw assumptions of native bellicosity
back at the European invaders, as Las Casas did.
Despite the war crimes (as we would call them)
commonly committed by Spaniards, their prefer-
ence was for peaceful surrender, as reflected in their
privileging of the term pacificación over conquista.
On occasion, Spaniards pillaged and destroyed like
pirates, but sometimes they demanded no more
than peaceful and temporary (albeit burdensome)
hospitality, and more often they came to settle,
bringing other Mesoamericans as subordinate
co-colonists. This triumvirate of factors—Spanish
decisions, Maya decisions, and the landscapes in
which the actors met—determined outcomes of rel-
ative peace (Tamactun) or extreme warfare (high-
land Guatemala).
In between the extreme experiences of the high-
land Maya and the Chontal Maya of Tamactun were
the Yucatec speakers of the north and southeast.
From Campeche to Cozumel, Tihó to Dzuluinicob,
Maya leaders engaged Spanish and Spanish–Nahua
invaders with a combination of hostility and diplo-
macy, accommodation and trickery, that confused
and infuriated the newcomers.
No wonder the Spanish failed ever to settle any
corner of Belize. No wonder it took three decades for
the Spanish to lay claim to a corner of the Yucatan
Peninsula. No wonder the first conquistador–town
councilors of Mérida wrote to the king in 1543—
when the permanence of the Spanish presence
there was by no means certain—that “ever since we
entered this land . . . the Indians have forced us into
many battles and denied us entry into the country,
because they are indomitable Indians, a bellicose
notes
1 Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine.
2 One of the few Mayanists to pay detailed attention
to how the Maya fought in the sixteenth century
is David Webster (see 1999, 2000), who began his
career as a Mayanist by studying warfare.
3 Graham 2011 is a splendid example of how archae-
ology and archive-based ethnohistory can be com-
bined to reconstruct lesser-studied conquest-era
stories. Also see Hammond and Bobo 1994 for an
intriguing suggestion as to how and why Spanish
incursions in sixteenth-century Belize may have
prompted a revitalization movement at sites like
La Milpa. I am not able to offer any comments on
Maya warfare in Belize in the 1540s, as no detailed
study of the 1544 Pacheco campaign has been writ-
ten, partly because the best-known sources (and
the ones I have seen) are at extreme ends of the
conquistador-narrative spectrum: either the per-
functory apologia of the Pachecos themselves (e.g.,
Melchor Pacheco’s probanza de mérito, “proof of
merit,” report in Archivo General de las Indias,
Escribanía 304b), or the Las Casas–style litany of
atrocities in Fray Lorenzo de Bienvenida’s 1548 let-
ter to the crown (surely Landa’s [1566:xv] source for
his very similar, briefer account; translated passages
people, raised from birth in warfare” (López de
Cogolludo 1688:ch. xii).22 Our happy job is not to
accept that the Maya waged war in the sixteenth
century simply because they were “bellicose,” nor
that they resisted defeat for so long because they
were “indomitable,” but to understand how and
why they did or did not fight.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the two anonymous outside read-
ers, to Norman Hammond, to David Webster, and
to this volume’s editors, Andrew Scherer and John
Verano, for their helpful suggestions and com-
ments on earlier drafts of this chapter.
from both friars’ accounts are in Chamberlain 1966
[1948]:235, and Jones 1989:42–43). Chamberlain’s
(1966 [1948]:232–236) version is outdated (but con-
tains archival leads); Jones’s (1989:41–47, 59–60)
analysis is excellent, although only a small part of
his book; also see Graham 2011:133. A recent sum-
mary of previous work on Spanish activities in six-
teenth-century Belize is Campbell 2011:3–39.
4 A brief historiographical essay, introducing and
defining the New Conquest History, can be found
online (Restall 2012).
5 Bernal Díaz penned a longer and equally justi-
ficatory account of this incident (written in 1542,
part of his Brevísima relación de la destrucción de
las Indias, but see my translation in Restall and
Asselbergs 2007:65). The dismantling of Utatlán’s
buildings took place over the successive years, as
its stones were used to build the church and other
structures in the nearby colonial town of Santa
Cruz del Quiché.
6 Carmack 1973 used for the transcription and trans-
lation of the Title of C’oyoi, pages 273–345; transla-
tions mine but heavily indebted to Carmack.
7 The K’iche’ text is transcribed in Carmack 1973:282;
I have adjusted somewhat his translation on page
Invasion 113
 302. Adelantado, literally “invader,” was the formal
title granted to a Spanish holder of a license from
the crown to conquer and settle a region; Pedro de
Alvarado held the license for highland Guatemala.
8 On ancient Maya music and its possible use in war-
fare, see Hammond 1972.
9 Useful to my thinking was Jones’s (1989:28) observa-
tion that the Maya of southeast Yucatan employed
“fortifications, the tactic of site abandonment, the
use of misrepresentation to confuse the enemy, and
the presentation of gifts as symbols of truce.”
10 Graham (2011:126) is right to be critical of Cham­­
ber­lain’s (1966 [1948]:33) unfiltered use of conquista-
dor probanzas and thus suspicious of the linguistic
abilities of Montejo’s chaplain, Juan Rodríguez de
Caraveo—and by extension, all Spanish priests on
these early expeditions.
11 Gonzalo de Alvarado’s original letter is in Archivo
General de las Indias, Patronato 58, 4.
12 This Spanish priest was asked in 1638 to write
an account, for the royal chronicler in Spain, of
Yucatan’s ecclesiastical history; his brief summa-
ries of preconquest and conquest history seem to
reflect well how Spaniards viewed such events in
the priest’s day.
13 Roman numeral references are to the chapter num-
bers used in all published editions (but not in the
original manuscript; see Tozzer 1941).
14 I have adapted somewhat my own translation of
the Maya text. The document I call the Title of
Saci-Sisal is embedded within the Pech titles from
Chicxulub and Yaxkukul (see Restall 1998:ch. 6).
15 Chamberlain (1966 [1948]:140) found it not in six-
teenth-century sources but in the chronicle written
a century later by Francisco López de Cogolludo
(1688). It is interesting that a reference to the inci-
dent appears in the Title of Saci-Sisal; one of the few
details marking the Spanish arrival at Chichén Itzá
is that “when Captain don Francisco de Montejo
arrived, it was he who honorably captured [yah
tohil yah tocil] Naobon Cupul” (Restall 1998:117).
But as the extant manuscripts of the Maya titles are
late colonial, we cannot be sure the story did not
work its way into Maya historical memory after the
sixteenth century.
16 When Montejo the Younger returned in 1540 with
a larger force, the Maya encouraged him to choose
Tihó as the location of the latest in a long string
of failed Spanish “cities” in the Yucatan. They may
11 4 re sta l l
have imagined that what worked at Chichén Itzá
in 1532 would work at Tihó in 1541. It is possible
that the successful refounding of the city as Mérida
in 1542 has masked what may have been intended
as another example of the Maya urban ambush
strategy.
17 The Annals of Oxkutzcab, translated in Restall
1998:81. My thanks to Susan Toby Evans for point-
ing out (during the symposium) the relevance of
the Otzmal Massacre.
18 Defensive pits were also used by the Inca during
the conquest wars in the Andes; González Suárez
(1891:159) states that the Inca general Rumiñahui,
battling Sebastian de Benalcázar at Riocajas
in 1534, opened up “deep pits in the mountain
ravines [hoyos profundos en los desfiladeros de la
Cordillera],” which “they covered with earth and
branches, so that the horses would fall in there” (my
thanks to Tamara Bray for leading me to this refer-
ence during the symposium). Hemming (1970:158)
states that at Riocajas, “in their desperation the
natives invented ingenious traps to bring down
the horses”; on this occasion, Hemming describes
a staked pit just like those dug in Guatemala a
decade earlier, but at other battles of the Spanish–
Inca wars the horse traps were “small holes” to
trip the horses (Hemming 1970:194–195, 203) or
agave spines scattered on the path to cripple them
(Hemming 1970:215).
19 The primary Cehach strategy, both when Cortés
passed through and when Dávila tried to pass
through from the other side in 1532, was to evacuate
their towns, leaving no supplies—sometimes even
taking the extreme measure of filling wells with
dirt (see Jones 1989:35–36).
20 Archivo General de las Indias, Guatemala 111 is the
1552 probanza of the Nahua governor of Xicalango,
detailing how he provided supplies and led men in
the invasion of Yucatan, so that “if we had not gone,
it would not have been possible to conquer the
province of Yucatan”; also see Chuchiak 2007:190.
21 For a brief description of geography in the Maya
area, in the warfare context, see Webster 2000:
70–72.
22 I used López de Cogolludo 1688 for his transcrip-
tion of the “Carta de los Conquistadores y Cabildo
de Mérida de 14 de Junio de 1542 sobre la Conquista
de Yucatán y sus Necesidades.”
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 con t ribu tor s
Elizabeth Arkush is a professor of anthropology
at the University of Pittsburgh. Her field research
centers on the archaeology of late pre-Hispanic
societies in the south-central Andes, particularly
on Andean warfare in practice and representation.
Her publications include Hillforts of the Ancient
Andes: Colla Warfare, Society, and Landscape
(2011), The Archaeology of Warfare: Prehistories of
Raiding and Conquest (2006, coedited with Mark
Allen), and articles on Andean warfare, social iden-
tity, political power, and archaeological interpreta-
tion. She was a fellow in Pre-Columbian Studies at
Dumbarton Oaks in 2009–2010.
Luis Jaime Castillo Butters studied archaeology at
the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and the
University of California, Los Angeles. Since 1991,
he has been the director of the San José de Moro
Archaeological Program. His research concerns
the evolution of complex Pre-Columbian societies,
with special attention to the development of ideolo-
gies and the consolidation of power. His particular
focus is the Mochica culture of Peru, especially their
ritual and funerary practices and their collapse.
He was a member of the National Commission of
Archaeology and the National Institute of Culture,
Peru, and he has served on the Ethics Committee of
the Society for American Archaeology. He has been
the coeditor of Latin American Antiquity, as well
as the editor of several scholarly volumes, includ-
ing Arqueología mochica: Nuevos enfoques (2008,
with Hélène Bernier, Gregory Lockard, and Julio
Rucabado), De Cupisnique a los incas: El arte del
valle de Jequetepeque (2009, with Cecilia Pardo), and
New Perspectives on Moche Political Organization
(2010, with Jeffrey Quilter). He has been a visit-
ing professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra,
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Universidad
Pablo de Olavide de Sevilla, Università degli Studi
di Siena, L’École des hautes études en sciences
sociales, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle–Paris 3,
Université Michel de Montaigne–Bordeaux 3, and
Lund University. He is the author of Personajes
míticos, escenas y narraciones en la icongrafía
mochica (1989), as well as some seventy academic
papers and articles.
Ximena Chávez Balderas studied archaeology at
the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia,
where her thesis was awarded the Alfonso Caso
Award in 2003. She earned an MA in physical anthro-
pology at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de
México; she was awarded the Miguel Covarrubias
Award by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e
Historia for an exhibition she curated in 2006. She
was the recipient of a grant from the Foundation for
the Advancement of Meso­­american Studies in 2005
for her research on human sacrifice and mortuary
treatments at the Templo Mayor. She has presented
more than fifty lectures and conference papers and
has published some thirty articles as well as a vol-
ume on funerary rituals—specifically cremation—
at the Templo Mayor. Chávez Balderas has worked
on a number of national and international exhibi-
tions and has excavated at Teotihuacan (including
Teopancazco, Xalla, and the Pyramids of the Moon
403
 and the Sun), as well as at Loma Guadalupe in
Michoacán. She was the main curator at the Museo
del Templo Mayor between 2001 and 2007 and a
bioarchaeologist with the Proyecto Templo Mayor,
under the direction of Leonardo López Luján. She
is currently enrolled in the PhD program in physi-
cal anthropology at Tulane University.
Charles Golden is an associate professor of anthro-
pology and Latin American and Latino studies at
Brandeis University. He has conducted archaeo-
logical research in Belize, Honduras, Guatemala,
and Mexico. He has worked in the Usumacinta
region since 1997, most recently as codirector of the
Sierra del Lacandón Regional Archaeology Project
in Petén and the Proyecto Arqueológico Budsilha-
Chocolja in Chiapas. His research interests con-
cern the dynamic social and political boundaries
between Maya kingdoms and the cultural signifi-
cance of temporal boundaries, history, and social
memory for the ancient Maya. Golden is coeditor
of Continuities and Changes in Maya Archaeology:
Perspectives at the Milllenium (2004, with Greg
Borgstede), Piedras Negras Archaeology, 1931–1939
(2005, with John Weeks and Jane Hill), and Maya
Archaeology I (2009, with Stephen D. Houston and
Joel Skidmore). He was a fellow in Pre-Columbian
Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in 2007–2008.
Gerardo Gutiérrez is an assistant professor of
anthropology of the University of Colorado, Boul­
der. He received a PhD in anthropological archae-
ology from Pennsylvania State University, an
MA in urban studies from El Colegio de México,
and a Licenciatura (BA) in archaeology from the
Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia. He
has done archaeological and ethnohistorical inves-
tigations in many areas of Mexico, including the
southern Huaxtec region; the Zapotec, Mixe, and
Chinantec regions of northern Oaxaca; the Mixtec-
Tlapanec-Nahua-Amuzgo region of Eastern Guer­
rero; and the Soconusco coast. He has written
articles on a variety of topics, including Huaxtec
religion and settlement patterns and the archaeol-
ogy and ethnohistory of Guerrero, in particular
the Postclassic Tlapa-Tlachinollan kingdom. He is
404 c on tri bu tors
the senior author of Códice Humboldt Fragmento 1
(Ms. amer. 2) y Códice Azoyú 2 reverso: Nómina de
tributos de Tlapa y su provincia al imperio mexi-
cano (bilingual edition) and Toponimia náhuatl de
los Códices Azoyú 1 y 2: Un estudio crítico; he is the
coeditor of El poder compartido: Ensayos sobre la
arqueología de organizaciones políticas segmentar-
ias y oligárquicas (2013, with Annick Daniels).
Takeshi Inomata is a professor of anthropology at
the University of Arizona. His research interests
include warfare, performance, politics, architec-
ture, and households in Maya society. From 1990
through 2005, he conducted field investigations at
Aguateca, Guatemala, focusing mainly on warfare
and the fall of the center. His current project, ini-
tiated in 2006, examines social change during the
Preclassic and Classic periods through extensive
excavations at Ceibal, Guatemala. For these inves-
tigations, he has been awarded grants from the
National Science Foundation, National Endow­
ment for the Humanities, National Geographic
Society, Sumitomo Foundation, Foun­dation for
the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, and
other agencies. He has coauthored or coedited nine
books, including Royal Courts of the Ancient Maya
(2001, with Stephen D. Houston), Archaeology of
Performance: Theaters of Power, Community, and
Politics (2006, with Lawrence S. Coben), The Classic
Maya (2009, with Stephen D. Houston), and Burned
Palaces and Elite Residences of Aguateca: Excavations
and Ceramics (2010, with Daniela Triadan).
Arthur A. Joyce is a professor of anthropology at
the University of Colorado, Boulder. He received
his PhD  from Rutgers University in 1991. His
research focuses on the Pre-Columbian peoples
of Meso­a merica, particularly on issues of power,
political dynamics, and landscape. Since 1986, he
has conducted interdisciplinary archaeological
and paleoenvironmental research in Oaxaca. He
is the author of Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and Chatinos:
Ancient Peoples of Southern Mexico (2010) and the
Arqueología de la costa de Oaxaca: Asentamientos
del periodo formativo en el valle del Río Verde
Inferior (1998, with Marcus Winter and Raymond
G. Mueller) as well as the editor of Polity and Eco­
logy in Formative Period Coastal Oaxaca (2013). His
publications also include “Domination, Negotia­
tion, and Collapse: A History of Centralized
Authority on the Oaxaca Coast” (in After Monte
Albán: Trans­ f ormations and Negotiation in
Oaxaca, Mexico [2008]) and “Reconsidering War­
fare in Formative Period Oaxaca” (with Andrew
Workinger, in Blood and Beauty: Organized Vio­
lence in the Art and Archaeology of Mesoamerica
and Central America [2009]). He has held research
fellowships from the American Museum of Natural
History (1992–1993), Dumbarton Oaks (1999), and
the American Council of Learned Societies (2006).
George F. Lau is a reader at the Sainsbury Research
Unit for the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Ameri­
cas (University of East Anglia, Norwich, United
Kingdom). He specializes in the archaeology and
art of South America, especially the Peruvian
Andes. His fieldwork investigates pre-Hispanic
communities of the Recuay tradition in Peru’s north
highlands. His publications, including Ancient
Community and Economy at Chinchawas (Ancash,
Peru) (2010), Andean Expressions: Archae­ology
and Art of the Recuay Culture (2011), and Ancient
Alterity in the Andes: A Recognition of Others (2012),
highlight the ways that local social life and material
culture shed light on regional processes of complex-
ity, particularly through exchange, identity, art pro-
duction, and ritual. He is also one of the editors for
the interdisciplinary journal World Art.
Dennis E. Ogburn is an associate professor in the
department of anthropology and a faculty affili-
ate of the Latin American Studies Program at
the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. His
primary theoretical interest is the development
of preindustrial empires, focusing specifically
on the expansion and maintenance of the Inca
empire of the Andes. Although much of his field-
work has been conducted in the Saraguro region
of southern Ecuador, he has also been involved in
projects in northern Ecuador and the Nasca and
Cusco regions of Peru. In his research, he employs
archaeological methods such as settlement survey,
geochemical sourcing, and GIS in combination
with those of ethnohistory. He was coeditor of
Foundations of Power in the Prehispanic Andes
(2005, with Kevin J. Vaughn and Christina A.
Conlee), a volume of the Archeological Papers of
the American Anthropological Association, and
has published articles in Latin American Antiquity,
Ethnohistory, and the Journal of Archaeological
Science, among others. Topics of some of those
publications include the provisioning of the Inca
army during wartime, the long-distance move-
ment of building stones in the Inca empire, and
indigenous ethnogenesis in the context of Inca and
Spanish colonialism. He earned his PhD and MA
at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and
his BA from Rice University.
Matthew Restall is the Edwin Erle Sparks Pro­
fessor of Colonial Latin American History and
Anthropology at Pennsylvania State University,
where he also directs the Latin American Studies
program. He was educated at Oxford University
and the University of California, Los Angeles; he
specializes in colonial Yucatan and Mexico, Maya
history, the Spanish conquest, and Africans in
Spanish America. Since 1995, he has published
numerous articles and essays and sixteen books,
including The Maya World: Yucatec Culture and
Society, 1550–1850 (1997), Maya Conquistador
(1998), and Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest
(2003). He received National Endowment for the
Humanities and Guggenheim fellowships for 1997–
1998, 2001–2002, and 2003–2004. Recent books
include the edited volumes Beyond Black and Red:
African-Native Relations in Colonial Latin America
(2005), Mesoamerican Voices: Native-Language
Writings from Colonial Mexico, Oaxaca, Yucatan,
and Guatemala (2005, with Lisa Sousa and Kevin
Terraciano), and Black Mexico: Race and Society
from Colonial to Modern Times (2009, with Ben
Vinson III), and the coauthored volume Invading
Guatemala: Spanish, Nahua, and Maya Accounts of
the Conquest Wars (2007, with Florine Asselbergs).
He is the series editor of Penn State University Press’s
Latin American Originals and a coeditor of the
journal Ethnohistory. His most recent monograph
c on t ribu tors 405
 is The Black Middle: Africans, Mayas, and Spaniards
in Colonial Yucatan (2009). In addition, he has
recently coauthored three volumes: Latin America
in Colonial Times (2011, with Kris Lane), 2012 and
the End of the World: The Western Roots of the Maya
Apocalypse (2011, with Amara Solari), and The
Conquistadors: A Very Short Introduction (2012,
with Felipe Fernández-Armesto).
Andrew K. Scherer is an assistant professor of
anthropology at Brown University. He has com-
pleted eleven seasons of archaeological fieldwork
in the middle Usumacinta River Basin of Guate­
mala and Mexico. He is especially interested in
the regional, diachronic, and comparative study
of Maya polities. As a bioarchaeologist, he has
researched diet and health at Piedras Negras; the
population history of the Classic Maya Lowlands;
violence at Colha, Belize; and royal mortuary
rites at El Zotz, Guatemala. Scherer was a fellow
at Dumbarton Oaks in 2008–2009. His research
has been sponsored by the National Science
Foun­­dation, Wenner-Gren Foundation, National
Geographic Society/Waitt Grants Program, and
Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoameri­­
can Studies. He is coauthor of Revisiting Maler’s
Usumacinta: Recent Archaeological Investigations
in Chiapas, Mexico (with Charles Golden) and
author of the forthcoming Classic Maya Souls:
Body, Ritual, and the Mortuary Landscape.
J. Marla Toyne is a physical anthropologist spe-
cializing in human skeletal biology, paleopathol-
ogy, bioarchaeology, and stable isotope science.
She earned her BA and MA from the University of
Western Ontario. Her PhD was awarded by Tulane
University. She pursued anthropological postdoc-
toral research at the University of Western Ontario
in the Laboratory for Stable Isotope Science. She is
currently an assistant professor at the University
of Central Florida. She has been awarded research
grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada and the National Geo­
graphic Society. Her primary area of investigation is
Andean South America, where she engages in con-
textually based research focusing on the analysis of
40 6 c on tri bu tors
ancient skeletal and mummified remains in order to
explore broader anthropological interests, includ-
ing the biocultural identification of violence and
warfare, ritual activities, ethnic identity, mortuary
complexity in ancient civilizations, and Andean
prehistoric and contact-period social interactions.
Tiffiny A. Tung is an associate professor of anthro­
pology at Vanderbilt University. She is an anthro-
pological bioarchaeologist who investigates how
ancient imperial policies and practices structure
health status, exposure to violence, and the lived
experience of ruling and subject peoples. Her
research on the bioarchaeology of imperialism
has focused on the Wari empire of the Peruvian
Andes and more recently on the Inca empire and
early Spanish empire in Peru. She is particularly
interested in exploring how sociopolitical condi-
tions structure violence and health profiles and
how those differ—if at all—among subgroups
within a population. She has directed archaeo-
logical excavations and bioarchaeological field and
lab work in the Majes Valley and Colca Valley of
southern Peru and in the Ayacucho Basin of cen-
tral highland Peru. Her work has been published
in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology,
Current Anthropology, Journal of Anthropological
Archaeology, and Latin American Antiquity, among
other journals and edited volumes. She is the
author of the book Violence, Ritual, and the Wari
Empire: A Social Bioarchaeology of Imperialism in
the Ancient Andes (2012).
John W. Verano is a physical anthropologist who
specializes in human osteology, paleopathology,
bioarchaeology, and forensic anthropology. He is
a professor of anthropology at Tulane University,
where he teaches courses in human osteology,
paleopathology, forensic anthropology, and South
American archaeology. His primary research
area is Andean South America, with a particular
focus on prehistoric populations of coastal and
highland Peru. Research interests include pathol-
ogy in ancient skeletal and mummified remains,
trepanation and other ancient surgery, and war-
fare, human sacrifice, and mortuary practices.
His fieldwork includes collaborative research with
a number of international and Peruvian archaeo-
logical projects, including the Pacatnamú Project
(1983–1987), Proyecto Arqueológico Huaca Rajada/
Sipán (1987–present), Proyecto Arqueológico Huaca
de La Luna (1995–present), Proyecto Arqueológico
Complejo El Brujo (1995–present), and the Proyecto
Arqueológico Huarmey (2003–present). His field
studies include analyzing human remains recov-
ered from excavations, as well as assisting and
directing the excavation of burials and sacrificial
contexts. He has published extensively on warfare
and human sacrifice in Peru, with a particular focus
on the Moche.
c on t ribu tors 407
 inde x

Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations. Andrushko, Valerie, 373

Comparative examples from non-Mesoamerican animals: anthropomorphic warriors on Moche ceramics,
cultures will all be found under the entry “com- 264, 266, 335n7; bones mixed with human remains, 179;
­­­­parative examples.” deer, 179, 289, 325, 326; dogs, as guides to underworld,
179; sacrificed at Templo Mayor, Tenochtitlan, 183. See
A also felines
Acalan-Tixchel (Tamactun), 94, 95, 102, 111–112 Annals of Oxkutzcab, 114n17
agriculture: of Colla in Titicaca Basin, 206; huari and Annals of the Kaqchikels, 109
llacuaz groups, structural oppositions between, 321, Aoyama, Kazuo, 38
321–322; in Middle Preclassic Pasión River region, Apu Pukara, 212, 213, 214, 215
42; Piedras Negras, access to maize in, 64; tribute Aquilpa-Teteltipa, 155
payments, expansion of irrigation agriculture for Araweté, 320
purposes of, 124 Arkush, Elizabeth, 8, 199, 208, 386, 391, 403
Aguateca, 9, 11, 31–33, 32, 36–37, 45 armies. See warriors and military organizations
Ah Kulel Chi (Xiu captive), 109 Arnold, Denise, 203
Ahuatepec, 157, 162, 163 Arrellano, Carmen, 368
Ahuitzotl (Aztec ruler), 144, 161, 180 arrow sacrifice (flechamiento), 174
Aia Paec (deity), 263 Asillo ceramics, 218, 219
Aj ‘Nik’ (Namaan ruler), 73, 77 Atahualpa, 14n11
Aj Uk (captive), 80 atemoztli, 174, 192n3
Albarracín-Jordán, Juan, 201, 202 Atlas guatemalteco (1834), 99
Albornoz, Cristóbal de, 331 atlcahualo veintena, 172, 192n2
Alconini, Sonia, 370 auca-related terms, 314–319, 315–318, 320
Alfaro, Martha Elena, 178 Auca Runa, 317, 318
Allaucachacha, 343 auto-sacrifice, 2, 123, 131
Altun Ha, 45 axes: greenstone axes, Cache 118, Ceibal, 42, 43; obsidian
Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, Fernando de, 143, 165 knife and axe from tomb under Temple 23, Yaxchilan,
Alva, Walter, 268 79; stone maces, axes, and mauls, Wari empire, 238,
Alvarado, Gonzalo de, 103, 114n11 239, 243
Alvarado, Jorge de, 95, 97 Axoxuca-Mirador, 155
Alvarado, Pedro de (Tonatiuh), 95, 96, 97–102, 103, Axoxuca-Xochitepec, 155, 160
107–108, 108, 109 Ayawiri/Machu Llaqta, 208–212, 210, 215, 216, 218
Alvarado Tezozómoc, Fernando, 143, 149 ayllus, 201–203, 221n1–2
Amat, Hernán, 207 Aymara language and people, 202, 203, 206, 211, 319
ancestor mummy bundles, 323 Azcapotzalco, 174, 178
Andamarca, 368 Codices Azoyú 1 and 2, 143, 155, 162
Andean warfare, 7–8, 10. See also Inca warfare and Aztacohuatzin (Serpent-Heron; Aztec ruler), 157, 165,
political strategy; Kuelap, skeletal data from; 166n8
Moche ritual combat and sacrifice; Moche warfare; Aztecs and Aztec warfare: ages of Mesoamerican
segmentary organization in South-Central Andes; soldiers, estimating, 128; battlegrounds, 9, 10, 391;
social organization and conflict in northern Peru; burning temples, iconography of, 10, 148–149, 149;
Wari empire captives, 147, 314; commoners participating in, 37;

409
 diplomacy, practice of, 103; Florentine Codex on,
5, 147; historiography of, 5–6, 117; iconography of
Aztec battlefields, 148–150, 148–150, 159, 160, 320;
Inca compared, 7; logistical and communication
issues, 390; morality of war, ambiguity regarding,
26; Oaxaca, Nahuatl names for places in, 123; as
predatory state, 129, 388; preparation for and conduct
of, 147–148; prestige, warrior class accumulating,
313; Spanish conquest and, 97, 102; state formation
and, 396, 397; Tamactun and, 112; teoatempan
tlachinoltempan battlefield concept, 146, 146–148, 148;
tzompantli (skull-racks), 107–108, 108, 124–125, 186,
187, 188; xochiyaoyotl (flower wars), 9, 129, 172, 265;
yaotlapallacuilolpan (battle map), 147, 150, 151, 155,
165, 166n1. See also Tenochtitlan, war and sacrifice at;
Tlapanec war
B Cabrera, Martha, 232
Bacalar, 95
Backo, Heather, 295, 301
ball games, 2, 33, 80, 132, 185–186, 335n4
Bandelier, Adolph, 357
Barranca Talapa, 162, 163
Barranca Tenango, 162, 163
Barrera, Alan, 189
battlegrounds and battlefields, focus on, 9–10, 63,
144–146, 391
Bayak, 45
Bazy, Damien, 45
Becan, 46, 117
Belize, Maya of, 95–96, 112
Benaducci, Lorenzo Boturini, 151
Benalcázar, Sebastian de, 114n18
Benavides, Mario, 232
Benson, Elizabeth, 299
Beringa, 244
Bertonio, Ludovico, 211, 319
Betanzos, Juan de, 373, 374–375, 376–377
Bienvenida, Fray Lorenzo de, 113n3
Billman, Brian, 268, 272, 302
Bird Jaguar IV (Yaxchilan ruler), 36, 77, 79–80, 81, 85, 86
Blackman Eddy, Structure B1-4th, 45
Blomster, Jeffrey, 124
bloodletting and bloodletting kits, 79, 123, 257, 264,
266–267, 294
bodies, embattled, focus on, 10–13
Bonampak Lintels 1, 2, and 3, 31, 86
Bonampak murals: authority, fealty, and tribute,
complex nature of, 12; battle scenes in, 27–29, 28, 59;
captive presentations in, 33, 80; in historiography
of warfare, vii, 7; social organization and war,
relationship between, 27, 29, 30, 33; south wall, Room
2, 27, 28, 39; trophy heads, 28, 39; Yaxchilan and, 87
Codex Borgia, 186, 189
Borgia Group codices, 191
Bourget, Steve, 292, 295, 301
Bourgois, Philippe, 25
bows and arrows, 174, 240–243, 241, 242, 352, 353
4 10 in de x
Bradley, Robert, 345
Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Díaz
del Castillo, 1542), 113n5
Brockington, Donald, 127
Broda, Johanna, 172
bronze mace head, Conchopata, 243, 243–244
Brown, Kathryn, 45
Buktuun, 77
burials. See specific locations
burning alive: of captives, 174, 180; Utatlán, burning
of K’iche’ kings by Spanish after battle for, 99, 100,
101–102
burning temples, Aztec iconography of, 10, 148–149, 149
Bustos Ríos, Diana, 189
C
Cabello Balboa, Miguel, 374, 375, 377, 378
Cajamarca, 271, 272
Calakmul, 48, 63, 70
calendrical stone, San Bartolomé Tlaquiltepec, 164,
164–165
Cañari, 371, 378
cannibalism, 173, 295
Caobal, 43
capac hucha child sacrifice (Inca), 356
Capahancos, 206
captives, displayed and sacrificed, 10–13, 386–388; in
Aztec warfare, 147, 314; Classic Maya focus on, 27,
28–32, 29–31, 33, 59, 59–60, 190, 314; by Mexica, 174,
175; at Monte Albán, 120, 123; in Oaxaca, 120, 123,
124–125, 130, 131–134; at Palenque, 71, 72, 74, 76; patron
deities, palanquins, and other significant objects
as captives, 35; at Piedras Negras, 59, 64–65, 65,
66, 69–70; Preclassic Maya focus on, 39–40, 43–45,
44, 48, 60; on scaffolds, 33–36, 35, 43–45, 44; social
organization and, 313–314, 322, 326, 327, 328, 329, 334;
at Templo Mayor, Tenochtitlan, 177, 186, 190; Tonina,
captive monuments in, 74; Utatlán, burning of K’iche’
kings by Spanish after battle for, 99, 100, 101–102; at
Yaxchilan, 64, 73, 77, 78, 80, 81. See also decapitation
and decapitated heads; Moche captive sacrifice;
Moche ritual combat and sacrifice; Tenochtitlan, war
and sacrifice at; trophies and trophy taking
Carneiro, Robert, 119
Castillo, Victor, 40
Castillo Butters, Luis Jaime, 8, 257, 302, 403
Catherwood, Frederick, 98, 99, 106, 107
Cayambe war, 376
Cehach, 103, 112, 114n19
Ceibal: Altar de Sacrificios, 31, 43; burials in, 39, 43–45,
44; carved shell face, Cache 108, 39–40, 41; Early
Middle Preclassic deposits, 38–43, 39–42; greenstone
axes, Cache 118, 42, 43; Late Middle and Late
Preclassic deposits, 43–45, 44; platforms in Group A,
40–41, 45
ceramics: Asillo, 218, 219; Cajamarca, 272; Chicanel,
43, 47, 48; Classic Maya Lowlands depictions of war
 and captives, 29, 29–30, 33, 34; Collao, 219; from chiefdoms (señoríos étnicos or ethnic territories), 199
Conchopata, 232, 242, 244, 247, 248; cream wares, Chiepetepec-Tlancualtepec, 155, 160, 161, 162
Monte Albán and Valley of Oaxaca, 123–124, 125, 127– Chiepetlan, 153, 157, 158, 160, 161, 163, 164
128; as evidence of Oaxaca territorial expansion, 123– Chiepetlan-Cuahtetl, 155, 158
124, 125, 127–128; Kekerana, 218; at Kuelap, 347, 356; Chiepetlan-Quimimiteopan, 155
Mamom, 43, 47; Mollo, 218; Preclassic lowland Maya children: capac hucha child sacrifice (Inca), 356; cranial
ceramics at Ceibal, 43; Pucarani, 218, 219; Recuay, 322, trauma from Wari empire, 233, 244; at Kuelap, 349–
323, 326, 328, 329, 331; Sillustani ware, 206, 218, 219; in 351, 350, 351, 353, 354, 357; sacrificed at Templo Mayor,
Titicaca Basin, 206, 207–208, 216, 218; Wari, 242, 243, Tenochtitlan, 171, 175, 180, 182, 183, 189, 190, 191, 192n6
246, 247, 248, 272; Xe, 43. See also Moche ceramics Chiltepec, 122, 157
ceremonial or ritual acts associated with Classic Maya Chimaltecpatzin (warrior), 160
conflict and warfare, 33–36, 34, 35 Chimu, 345, 358n3, 378
ceremonial or ritual combat. See ritual or ceremonial Chinchawas, 324
combat Chinchayqocha, 368
Cerro Baúl, 231 Ch’olan language, 47
Cerro Ceja, 155 Chontal Maya, 95, 102, 111–112
Cerro Chepén, 260, 268, 270, 272–274, 273, 276 chullpas, 211, 218, 221–222n4, 345
Cerro Colorado, 272, 275 Church, Warren, 357
Cerro Cruz, 155 Cicco, Gabriel de, 127
Cerro Cuexcomatzin, 162 Cieza de León, Pedro de, 374, 375–376, 377
Cerro de la Cruz, 125–127, 126, 127 Cival, 46
Cerro de las Minas, 130 Classic Ch’olti’an language, 47
Cerro de Quiotepec, 124 Classic Maya conflict and warfare, 7, 57–87; captives,
Cerro del Inga, 370 display and sacrifice of, 27, 28–32, 29–31, 33, 59, 59–60,
Cerro Jazmín, 130 190, 314; community and identity, reinforcing, 35–36,
Cerro K’akru, 207 46, 47; in daily discourse and imagination, 37–38;
Cerro Monos, 212 historiography of, 57; iconography of, 27–33, 28–32,
Cerros, 46 117; landscape and, 60–64, 62, 63, 81–85, 82–85; plaza
Chaak (rain deity), 79 stelae, different readings of, 36; as political act or
Chaak Ak’al, 45–46 instrument, 57–58, 70; Preclassic roots of, 27, 38,
Chachapoya, 342–344, 355, 356, 357, 373, 377. See also 46–48; ritual or ceremonial acts associated with,
Kuelap, skeletal data from 33–36, 34, 35; social organization and war, relationship
Chak Suutz’ (Palenque noble), 74 between, 27; subordinate lords and subordinate
Chalcatzingo, 172 centers, 70; textual sources, 27; warrior figurines,
Chalchuapa burials, 45 31–33, 32, 36–37; western Maya kingdoms as focus
Chalco, 178 of, 58, 58–59. See also Palenque; Piedras Negras;
Chamberlain, Robert, 104, 106, 114n10, 114n15 Yaxchilan
Chamical, 371, 372 Coachimalco, 155, 160, 162
Chapdelaine, Claude, 268 Cocom slaughter of Xiu nobles at Otzmal (1536), 108–109
Charco Redondo, 128 codices: Azoyú 1 and 2, 143, 155, 162; Borgia, 186, 189;
Chávez Balderas, Ximena, 6, 171, 386, 387, 388, 403–404 Borgia Group, 191; flint knives in, 189, 191; Florentine
Chel polity, 104, 106 Codex, 5, 147; Huamantla, 166n3; Humboldt
Cheqo Wasi mortuary sector, Huari: cranial trauma, Fragment 1, 162; Mendoza, 122, 123, 148–149, 156,
233–240, 234–235, 236, 237; elites, higher rates of 166n2; Telleriano-Remensis, 96
violence amongst, 244–246; female cranial trauma, Colha decapitated head deposit, 33
233, 236, 237–238, 239–240, 244, 250; parry fractures, Colla of Titicaca Basin: Inca and, 205–206, 218, 372, 373,
240; site description, 232; trauma rates compared to 377–378; segmentary organization of, 204, 204–209,
Conchopata, 244–246, 245–246 205, 207, 208, 218, 220
Chetumal, 95, 104, 107, 108, 111 Colla Urcosuyu, 218
Chi, Gaspar Antonio, 109 Collao ceramics, 219
Chiapa de Corzo, 43, 45 Collique, 371
Chicanel ceramics, 43, 47, 48 colonial period. See Spanish conquest and colonial
chicha, 262, 268 period
Chichén Itzá: decapitated head deposit at stairway base, communal attachment, war and war ceremonies
33; Great Ballcourt, 106; murals, 59; Spanish-Maya reinforcing, 35–36, 46, 47, 133
battle for (1532), 104–107, 105, 106, 108; Upper Temple comparative examples: Achemaenid empire,
of the Jaguars, 27–29, 28, 30 396; Assyrian empire, 387, 395, 396; Berlin,
Chicomecóatl (deity), 174 Battle of (World War II), 9, 63; Byzantium and

in dex 4 1 1
 Constantinople, 4, 63, 74, 387, 395, 396; Chinese states,
389, 396, 397; Christian medieval political culture,
393; Egypt, 11, 12, 118, 272, 324; European medieval
knighthood and chivalry, 14n3, 48; French and
Indian War and Fort Duquesne, 145; Hindu southern
India, Chola and Vijayanagara empires, 392–394;
Indus Valley Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro cultures,
397; Iroquois captive taking and ritual, 314; Islamic
culture and politics, 201, 387, 393, 395, 396; Japanese
samurai, 14n3, 48, 387; Jerusalem, sieges of, 60, 63;
Maori war dance and ritual display, 387; Melanesian
(Sepik, Papua New Guinea) societies, 26, 38, 201,
215; Mesopotamia, 118, 389, 397; modern Iraq and
Afghanistan wars, 4, 14n5, 14n10–11, 63; Naram-Sin
of Akkad stela, 390; Narmer Palette, 11, 12, 324; North
American native culture, 134, 314, 354, 388; Rome and
Roman legions, 4, 14n3, 60, 257, 324, 396; Sparta, 257;
Los Zetas drug cartel, Mexico, 14n4
Conchopata: ceramics from, 232, 242, 244, 247, 248;
cranial trauma from, 232–233; elites, higher rates of
violence amongst, 244–246; female cranial trauma,
244, 250; previous studies of, 227, 232; trauma rates
compared to Cheqo Wasi, 244–246, 245–246; trophy
heads, 231, 232–233, 244, 246–248, 247, 249; as Wari
site, 232; weapons from, 239, 240–244, 241–243
“Conflict, Conquest, and the Performance of War in
Pre-Columbian America” (symposium, Dumbarton
Oaks, October 2011), vii, 2, 385
conopas, 202
conquest. See Spanish conquest and colonial period
conquest-period Maya military strategy and tactics, 7,
93–113; Chichén Itzá, battle for (1532), 104–107, 105, 106,
108; diplomacy and intelligence, 102–103, 111–112; four
geographic regions of Maya resistance and Spanish
incursion, 94, 95–96; guides, Maya serving as, 102–103,
104; innovation in, 93, 108, 112; Iximche’, battle for
(1524), 107–108, 108; landscapes affecting, 93–95, 111–113;
New Conquest History and, 96; Otzmal, Xiu nobles
slaughtered by Cocom at (1536), 108–109; staked horse
pits tactic, 108, 109–111, 110, 111, 114n18; urban ambush
tactic, 103–109, 105, 106, 108; Utatlán, battle for (1524),
97, 97–102, 98, 100, 101, 103, 104, 107, 113n5
conscripts, 4
Cook, Anita, 244
Coporaque, 202
copper-bronze mace head, Conchopata, 243, 243–244
Cortave, Mónica, 39
Cortés, Hernán[do], 2, 11, 14n5, 93, 95, 97, 102, 103, 109,
112, 114n19, 149
Cortez, Rosi, 292
Cotocotuyoc, 249
Coyolxauhqui (deity) and Coyolxauhqui monolith,
Templo Mayor, Tenochtitlan, 175, 176, 177, 178
Cozcatepec (Tenango Tepexi), 155, 158, 159, 160, 162, 163,
164, 165, 166n8
cream wares, Monte Albán and Valley of Oaxaca,
123–124, 125, 127–128
Crónica mexicana (Alvarado Tezozómoc), 149
4 12 in de x
Cuarto de los Cráneos, Dos Cabezas, 302
Cuauhtémoc (Aztec emperor), 102
Cuello, 39, 45
Cuetlaxtla, 178
Cuicatlán, 122, 123, 125
Cuicatlán Cañada, 121, 123–125, 130, 131, 134, 135
Cupul polity, 106, 107
Cutimbo, 212
Cuzco, 202, 205, 318, 321, 365, 373, 375, 376, 377
D
Dainzú, 132
danzantes, 6, 6–7
Dávila [de Ávila], Alonso, 95, 103, 104, 114n19
decapitation and decapitated heads: masks and effigies
made from skulls, 186–188, 187, 191; Moche, 284,
288, 301; Oaxaca, Late/Terminal Formative period,
123, 124, 130, 131; Preclassic Maya, 33, 39–40, 41,
43, 45; Templo Mayor, Tenochtitlan, 174, 180, 184,
184–186, 185, 188, 189, 190, 191; Tlapanec war and, 153;
tzompantli (skull-racks), 107–108, 108, 124–125, 186,
187, 188; vessels, skulls used as, 295, 296, 300, 301; Wari
trophy heads, 231, 232–233, 244, 246–248, 247, 249
deer, 179, 289, 325, 326, 335n7
Demarest, Arthur, 7
Díaz del Castillo, Bernal, 2, 5–6, 11, 101, 103, 113n5
Dios Yapita, Juan de, 203
diplomacy and intelligence, as conquest-period Maya
military strategy, 102–103, 111–112
Diquiyú, 130
dogs, as guides to underworld, 179
domestic and social violence related to militarism in
Wari empire, 250
Donnan, Christopher, 260, 263, 268, 284, 289, 292, 294
Dos Cabezas, 270, 272, 289, 302
Dos Caobas Stela 1, 59, 78, 80
Dos Ceibas, 37, 45
Dos Pilas: hieroglyphic stairway, 11, 33; Stele 14, 30
Durán, Diego, 143, 149–150, 174, 178, 180, 181, 190
Duverger, Christian, 172, 173
Dzibanche hieroglyphic stairway, 33
Dzuluinicob, 95, 113
E
Eastern Guerrero, Aztec conquest of. See Tlapanec war
Eberl, Markus, 37
Ecatepec, 178
Edzna, 46
Ehécatl Quetzalcóatl (deity), 175, 176
Ejutla Valley, Oaxaca, 121, 123, 124
El Brujo, 249, 264, 284–285, 289, 301, 302
El Castillo, 249
El Chicozapote, 81, 82
El Coyote decapitated head deposit, 33
El Kinel, stela, 81
El Mirador, 46, 48, 118
El Palma, Chiapas (possibly Lakamtuun), 64, 69
El Túnel, 81
Elam, Michael, 134 Hatun Collas, 206, 373
Estrada-Belli, Francisco, 46 Hatuncolla (Hatunqolla), 205, 206, 207, 371
ethnic territories or señoríos étnicos (chiefdoms), 199, 205 Haucaypata, Cuzco, 318
Etlatongo, 130 heart extraction, 172, 174, 180, 182, 192n3
Evans-Pritchard, E. E., 200, 201 Hellmuth panel, Piedras Negras, 70
Hemming, John, 114n18
F herding and pastoralism: llacuaz and huari groups,
“fat men” figurines, 31–33, 32 structural oppositions between, 321, 321–322; at
Feathered Serpent, Temple of, Teotihuacan, 172 Yayno, 329, 331
felines: jaguar sacrifice, Templo Mayor, Tenochtitlan, 181, Hernández de Córdoba expedition (1517), 95
182–183; in Moche culture, 263, 265, 266, 327, 328; in hilanco, 319
Recuay culture, 322, 324, 327, 328 Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España
figurines: Classic lowland Maya warrior figurines, 31–33, (Sahagún), 149
32, 36–37; “fat men” and grotesques, 31–33, 32; Recuay Historia tolteca-chichimeca, 174, 335n4
warrior figurine, 329, 331; Wari warrior figurines, historiography of war in Pre-Columbian America, vii,
248–249 5–8, 96
Flannery, Kent, 123 History of the Indies of New Spain (Durán, 1588), 149–150
flechamiento (arrow sacrifice), 174 Hix Witz, 77, 79, 81
flint knives: in codices, 189, 191; at Templo Mayor, honorable death (yaomicque), Aztec concept of, 147, 180,
Tenochtitlan, 175, 176; used in skull masks, 187, 191 320–321
Florentine Codex, 5, 147 horse pits, staked, 108, 109–111, 110, 111, 114n18
flower wars, Aztec (xochiyaoyotl), 9, 129, 172, 265 Houston, Stephen, 59
Fortes, Meyer, 200, 201 Huaca Colorada, 270, 272, 273, 274
Frye, Kirk, 212 Huaca de la Luna (Pyramid of the Moon), Moche:
Furst, Jill, 173 archaeological evidence of captive sacrifice from,
287, 288, 289–292, 290, 291, 299–301, 300; as capital of
G Moche state, 302; ceramic vessels and pottery effigies
Galarza, Joaquín, 151, 155, 156 of captives, 292, 293, 327; iconography of warfare
Gallinazo populations, 271 and sacrifice at, 284–285, 285; identity of sacrificial
gaming boards or tableros, 319, 320, 335n3 victims from, 292–293, 293; interpretation of warfare
Garber, James, 45 representations, 288, 289; Platform III (New Temple),
gender. See women 290, 295, 299–301, 300, 303; Plaza 1, 288, 290; Plaza
Gentile L., Margarita E., 319 3A, 289–292, 290, 291, 293, 294, 295, 301; Plaza 3C,
Geyer, Michael, 230 287, 289–292, 290, 291, 293, 295, 296, 297, 298, 301;
Golden, Charles, 7, 57, 63, 386, 391, 404 postmortem treatment of sacrificed bodies at, 287,
González, Blas, 104 294–299, 296–299; Revolt of the Objects mural, 299;
González Holguín, Diego, 314, 319 ritual combat and sacrifice, 264, 266, 267, 269, 271
González Torres, Yólotl, 174, 175, 180 Huaca el Brujo, 270–271, 284–285
Gose, Peter, 321 Huamachuco, 271
graffiti: Cerro Colorado, 275; Tikal, 35, 59 Códice Huamantla, 166n3
Graham, Elizabeth, 104, 112, 114n10 Huamelulpan, 130
Graulich, Michel, 172, 173 Huancas, 357
Great Maya Revolt (1547), 95 Huánuco Pampa, 371
greenstone axes, Cache 118, Ceibal, 42, 43 Huari: iconography of violence from, 242, 243, 248; as
Grijalva expedition (1518), 95 Wari capital, 227, 232; weapons, 240–244, 241, 242. See
“grotesques” (figurines), 31–33, 32 also Cheqo Wasi mortuary sector, Huari
Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe, 317, 318 huari (agricultural) and llacuaz (herder) groups,
guano islands, Moche sacrifice on, 266 structural oppositions between, 321, 321–322
guides for Spanish, Maya serving as, 102–103, 104 Huarochirí Manuscript (1598–1608), 314, 376, 378
Gusterson, Hugh, 80 Huayna Capac (Inca ruler), 343, 377–378
Gutiérrez, Gerardo, 6, 112, 143, 151, 368, 386, 389, 391, 404 huayro, 319
huey tozoztli, 174, 192n3
H Huitzilopochtli (deity), 171, 175, 177, 178, 182, 186, 190, 191,
Haldon, John, vii, 2, 385 192n3, 287, 320
Halperin, Christina, 37 human sacrifice. See captives, displayed and sacrificed;
Harner, Michael, 173 sacrifice
Harrison, Simon, 26, 38, 201 Codex Humboldt Fragment 1, 162
Hassig, Ross, 9, 128, 172 hunting and warfare, 313, 325–326, 326

in dex 4 13
 I Karitani pukara, 214, 215
Ibarra, Eugenia, vii
Ichochacha, 343
identity and war/violence, 25–26, 36, 46, 47, 133
illegitimate warrior groups, 3, 4
Inca warfare and political strategy, 8, 365–380;
archaeological evidence of, 368–372, 369, 370, 372;
battlefields and battlegrounds, 391; bioarchaeological
evidence of, 372–373; capac hucha child sacrifice,
356; Chachapoya and, 342, 343, 357; Colla of Titicaca
Basin and, 205–206, 218, 372, 373, 377–378; in
ethnohistorical record, 365, 373–378; fire signals,
use of, 215; geography and, 389; Haucaypata, Cuzco,
importance of, 318; Kuelap and, 356, 357, 373; nature of
political structure, 396–397; rebellion and reconquest,
366, 367, 376–378, 379; siege tactics, use of, 14n8; social
organization, war as element of, 319, 321; sources for
study of, 5, 7, 284, 365, 367–368; staked horse pits, use
of, 114n18; state formation and, 396, 397; use of armed
conquest versus negotiated submission, 366–367,
375–376, 379, 390
incensarios, 74
Ingham, John, 173
Inkawasi, 371
Inomata, Takeshi, 7, 11, 25, 33, 60, 130, 404
intelligence and diplomacy, as conquest-period Maya
military strategy, 102–103, 111–112
Invaders as Ancestors (Gose, 2008), 321
Isbell, William, 244
Itzamkanac, 102
Itzamnaaj Bahlam III (Yaxchilan ruler), 36. See also
Shield Jaguar III (Yaxchilan ruler)
Itzan, 43, 45
Itzimte: Stela 3 at, 39; Stela 7 at, 31, 32
Itzmal, 108
Iximche’, battle for (1524), 107–108, 108
ixiptla, 175, 182, 190
Ixlu decapitated head deposit, 33
Izapa: iconographic evidence of sacrifice at, 172; Stelae 3,
4, and 21 at, 46
izcalli, 175
Izhuacan, 174
Izko, Xavier, 202, 203
Iztac Mixcóatl (deity), 177, 178
J Lake Titicaca and Titicaca Basin, 199, 200, 204, 204–209,
jaguar sacrifice, Templo Mayor, Tenochtitlan, 181, 182–183
Jaina, warrior figurines from, 37
Jones, Grant D., 114n9
Joyce, Arthur A., 7, 48, 117, 128, 386, 391, 404–405
Julien, Catherine, 207
K Langlois, L., 345
Kaminaljuyu: burials at, 45; Monument 65 at, 46; Oaxaca
and, 118
K’an Joy Chitam II (Palenque ruler), 60
Kaneko, Akira, 88n1
Kaqchikel Maya, 93, 95, 101, 104, 107–108, 108, 109, 111
4 1 4 in de x
K’atacha pukara, 214, 215
Kekerana ceramics, 218
Kelly, Raymond, 200
K’iche’ Maya, 93, 95, 97–101, 103, 107, 108, 111
K’inich Ahkal Mo’ Nahb (Palenque ruler), 74, 75
K’inich Baaknal Chaak (Tonina ruler), 71
K’inich Janaab Pakal I (Palenque ruler), 74
K’inich Kan Bahlam (Palenque ruler), 71, 72
K’inich Yo’nal Ahk II (Piedras Negras ruler), 68, 77
Knot-Eye Jaguar (Yaxchilan ruler), 64
Komar, Debra, 342
Kuelap, skeletal data from, 8, 341–357; bioarchaeological
approach to, 341–342; Chachapoya culture, 342–343;
demography, 349–351, 350, 351, 354; difficulties of
battlefield archaeology and, 9; ethnohistorical
sources, 343, 357; mass killing, interpreted as, 354;
Plataforma Circular, 346–347, 346–348, 355–356,
357, 358n4; potential perpetrators of, 356–357, 373;
Pueblo Alto and Pueblo Bajo, 344, 345, 347, 355,
356; reconstruction of events, 354–356, 355; related
Chachapoya bioarchaeological studies, 343–344;
site of Kuelap, 344–347, 344–348; social organization
and conflict, relationship between, 341, 357; Spanish
conquest and, 347, 352–353, 353, 355, 356, 357; Templo
Mayor, 344–346, 355, 356; traditional burials at,
358n1; trauma analysis and results, 348–353, 349–353;
weapons and types of assault used at, 352–353, 353,
354–355, 355, 358n6
L
La Coyotera, 124, 134
La Libertad, 43, 45
La Mar: Parrot Chaak (ajaw), 65, 67, 69, 70; Stela 3 at, 31,
70, 71, 77
La Pasadita, fortifications, reception hall, and Lintel 2 at,
81, 82–84, 83, 85, 86
La Real, 244
La Vega, Edmundo de, 212
La Venta, 43
Lacanha, 73, 77, 79
Lago/Laguna Umayo, 207, 215, 218
Laguna Tamarindito, core taken from, 42
Lakamtuun (possibly El Palma, Chiapas), 64, 66, 69
Lake Texcoco, 185
205, 211, 212, 215, 218, 219, 221. See also segmentary
organization in South-Central Andes
Lampa River valley pukara group, 212–215, 213, 214, 216,
217, 218
Lamparaquen, 207, 214, 218, 222n6
Landa, Fray Diego de, 105, 106, 109, 113n3
language, use of terms for war and opposition in, 314–
319, 315–318, 320
Larco Hoyle, Rafael, 257, 284
Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 101, 109–110, 112, 113n3
Lau, George F., 8, 286, 405
Laxtunich Lintel 1, 33 strategy and tactics; Maya hieroglyphs; Preclassic
Leoni, Juan, 232 Maya Lowlands, warfare in
Levanto, 357 Mayapan, 108
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 321 McKinley, Jacqueline, 178
lienzo, defined, 151 Meddens, Frank, 368
Lienzo de Chiepetlan 1, 151–163; on battle for Tlapa, Codex Mendoza, 122, 123, 148–149, 156, 166n2
161–164, 163; chronological markers in, 161; mercenaries, 4
iconography and mapping of, 151–153, 152–154; linking Mérida (formerly Tihó), 95, 108, 113, 114n16
archaeological sites to, 155–160, 156–151; Nahautl Mexica: Lienzo de Chiepetlan 1 and, 153; migration
glosses, 153–155, 156–160; value of, 143, 144, 151, 165; as into Basin of Mexico, 123; Moctezuma’s authority as
yaotlapallacuilolpan, 150, 151 speaker for, 12; prestige, warrior class accumulating,
Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, 97, 100, 102, 109, 110, 110–111, 313; sacrificial practices, 172–175; Spanish conquest
111 and, 2; Tlapanec war and, 155, 165, 166n6; warfare
Lienzo de Tlaxcala, 101 practices of, 171–172. See also Aztecs and Aztec
Lizard (Tlapanec ruler), 150 warfare; Tenochtitlan, war and sacrifice at
llacuaz (herder) and huari (agricultural) groups, Miahuatlán Valley, Oaxaca, 121, 122, 123
structural oppositions between, 321, 321–322 Michoacán, 178
Llano Perdido, 124, 131 Mictecacíhuatl (deity), 191
Lliviac (deity), 322 Mictlantecuhtli (deity), 174, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191
logistics of territorial conquest, 128–129, 388, 390–391 military. See warriors and military organizations
Lohse, Jon, 43 Miller, Mary Ellen, 88n2
López Austin, Alfredo, 175, 178 mitamaes, 343
López de Cogolludo, Francisco, 114n15, 114n22 Mixteca Alta, 121, 124, 130, 134
López Luján, Leonardo, 175, 178, 183, 191 Mixteca Baja, 130, 134
Los Mangales burials 2, 5, 6, and 12, 45 Moche captive sacrifice, 8, 283–302; archaeological
Los Naranjas, 46 evidence of, 283, 286–287, 287, 289–292, 290, 291,
Lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca, 121, 124, 125, 126, 134 299–301, 300; debate over ritual nature of, 286, 286–
Lumbreras, Luis, 207 288, 287, 301–302; deer, captives equated with, 325,
Lutz, Catherine, 5, 230 326; iconography of, 284–287, 284–288; identification
of victims, 292–293, 293, 299; identifying warfare
M in archaeological record, 284; interpretation of
maces: copper-bronze mace head, Conchopata, 243, representations of, 288, 286–288; postmortem
243–244; star-shaped maces used at Kuelap, 352, 355, treatment of sacrificed bodies, 287, 294–299, 296–300,
358n6; stone maces, axes, and mauls, Wari empire, 301; pottery effigies and portrait vessels, 292, 293, 327;
238, 239, 243 predator-prey (master-pet) relations, 327, 329; reasons
Machaca, Gudelia, 232 for, 301; treatment and execution of captives, 286–288,
Machu Llaqta/Ayawiri, 208–212, 210, 215, 216, 218 294, 294, 295, 299, 301, 327; weapons used in war, 289
Machu Picchu, 373 Moche ceramics: anthropomorphic warriors, 264, 266,
Makowski Hanula, Krzysztof, 268 335n7; dancing skeletons depicted on, 299; deer-
Mamom ceramics, 43, 47 hunting imagery, 325, 326; iconography of warfare on,
Mann, Michael, 393 286, 322–327, 325, 358n6; portrait vessels and pottery
manoplas, 33 effigies of captives, 292, 293, 327; predator-prey
Mantha, Alexis, 203 (master-pet) relations displayed in, 327, 329; ritual
maquetas, 275, 276, 319, 320 combat and sacrifice portrayed on, 261, 262–263,
Marcus, Joyce, 121, 122–123, 124 265–267, 270, 271, 275, 276, 277; social organization
Martin, Simon, 35, 59 and conflict, relationship between, 322–327, 325
master-pet (predator-prey) relations in Recuay and Moche Pyramid of the Moon. See Huaca de la Luna
Moche ceramics, 327, 328, 329 (Pyramid of the Moon), Moche
Matos Mendieta, Ramiro, 368 Moche ritual combat and sacrifice: iconography of, 261,
Matos Moctezuma, Eduardo, 178, 180 276, 277; Jequetepeque Valley sites, evidence from,
Maudslay, Alfred, 5–6 276–277, 278; reconstruction of conduct of, 262–263,
Maya chuc’ah, 129 262–268, 265–267; scholarly debate over, 259–260, 286,
Maya hieroglyphs: historiography of warfare and 286–288, 287, 301–302
decipherment of, vii, 7, 117; plaza stelae, different Moche warfare, 8, 257–278; chronology of, 260, 261;
readings of, 36 historiography of, 8, 257–260, 277; iconography of,
Maya “Star Wars,“ 9 249, 257, 259, 260–262, 268, 277, 322–326; identifying
Maya warfare, vii, 7, 10, 389, 396. See also Classic Maya warfare in archaeological record, 284; Jequetepeque
conflict and warfare; conquest-period Maya military Valley sites, evidence from, 260, 261, 268–270, 269,

in dex 4 15
 272–277, 278; map of Moche territory, 258; multiple
Moche political units, 260, 270–272, 302; non-
Moche and, 265, 266, 270, 277, 322–327, 323–326, 328,
329; panoply or weapon bundle, 264, 267, 276; real
warfare, evidence of, 268–270; social organization
and conflict, relationship between, 322–327, 325, 328,
334; Wari empire and, 257–259, 271
Mockingbird-Arrow (Tlapanec ruler), 150
Moctezuma I (Moctezuma Ilhuicamina; Aztec ruler),
144, 161, 171, 177, 286, 287
Moctezuma II (Aztec ruler), 12, 14n11, 103
moieties, 202–203, 212, 221n1–2, 314
Mollo ceramic tradition, 218
Monte Albán: archaeological evidence for territorial
expansion out of, 123–128; Building J Slabs, 120,
120–121, 122–123, 124, 131; Building L-sub orthostats,
120, 122, 123, 130, 131; cream wares, Monte Albán
and Valley of Oaxaca, 123–124, 125, 127–128;
danzantes at, 6, 6–7; debate over warfare patterns
of, 118; “defensive“ wall at, 135; importance of,
130, 131, 135; landscape and siting, 119; logistics of
territorial conquest, 128–129; Monument D-78 at,
120; Monument J-41 at, 131; political upheaval in, 131;
predatory expansion model and, 118, 119–121, 124, 126,
127, 129, 131; temple, North Platform, 131
Monte Negro, 130
Montejo family, 95, 103–104, 106, 112, 114n10, 114n15–16
Moquihuix (lord of Tlatelolco), 177, 178
Moral Reforma, 70
morality and war/violence, 26, 47–48
Morris, Craig, 371
Moseley, Michael, 211
Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina stone, Templo Mayor,
Tenochtitlan, 177, 286, 287
Motul de San José, warrior figurines from, 31, 37
Mountain Cow, 45
Murra, John, 377
Murralla de León, 46
Murúa, Martín de, 319
N Ortíz de Montellano, Bernardo, 173
Nachi Cocom, 109
Nacimiento, warrior figurines from, 37
Nacon Cupul, 106, 107, 114n15
Nahua: belief that one of three body souls resides in
head, 180; Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, 97; Maya
lands, involvement in Spanish invasion of, 95, 97,
101–103, 110, 112–113, 114n20; Pedro de Alvarado and,
95, 96; sacrifice common to most polities of, 173; in
Tlapanec war, 143, 151, 153, 154, 158, 161–165
Nahuatl language, 96, 103, 108, 122–123, 146, 150, 151, 153,
155, 160
Nahui Ollin, 147
Nakbé, 46
Namaan, 73, 77, 79
Naranjo, 33, 35
Narváez Vargas, L. Alfredo, 8, 341, 345, 346, 372, 386
Nasca-Chakipampa burials, 244
4 16 in de x
Nawinpukio, 227, 232, 233, 244, 246
Neira, Máximo, 207
New Conquest History, 96
nextlahualtin, 175
Nielsen, Axel, 200, 211
Nieto, Juan Crisóstomo, 344
nonstate segmentary organization. See segmentary
organization in South-Central Andes
Nordstrom, Carolyn, 250
nose ornaments, Señora de Cao, 262
Nystrom, Kenneth, 344
O
Oaxaca warfare in Late/Terminal Formative period, 6–7,
117–135; alternatives to territorial conquest, 130–135;
archaeological evidence of territorial conquest,
123–128, 125–127; comparative data from other parts
of Mesoamerica, 129–130; cream wares, Monte Albán
and Valley of Oaxaca, 123–124, 125, 127–128; defensible
sites, moves to, 119, 130; fortifications and earthworks,
study of, 134–135; logistics of territorial conquest,
128–129; map of Oaxaca, 118; osteological record, 134;
predatory expansion model of territorial conquest,
118, 119–121, 122, 124, 126, 127, 129, 131; religion and,
131–134, 132, 133; scholarly agreements about, 130;
scholarly debate over, 117–119, 122–128; sources, 117;
status rivalry model, 130, 131, 132, 135; Tenochtitlan,
conflict with, 178. See also Monte Albán
obsidian: knife and axe from tomb under Temple 23,
Yaxchilan, 79; at pukaras in South-Central Andes,
218, 222n7; Wari points, Huari and Conchopata, 240,
241, 243
Ocelotepec, 122, 123
Ochatoma, José, 232
Ogburn, Dennis E., 8, 365, 389, 391, 405
Olmec, 118
organization and conflict. See entries at social
organization and conflict
Orizaba, 178
Orr, Heather, 132
Oso Negro, 81, 83, 84
Otzmal, Xiu nobles slaughtered by Cocom at (1536),
108–109
P
Pacatnamu, 249, 270, 272, 274–275
Pachacuti (Inca ruler), 373, 378
Pacheco cousins, 95, 112, 113n3
Palenque: “axed“ by Calakmul, 63; captives depicted at,
59; East Court, Palace, 74, 76; landscape of, 61–62,
63; Moral Reforma and, 70; paucity of war images at,
71–74, 87; Piedras Negras Stela 26 and, 68; stela at,
88n2; Tablet of the Slaves, 74, 75; Temple XVII tablet,
71–73, 72
Palomo, Juan Manuel, 39, 43
Pambamarca, 368, 369, 370, 371
Pampa Grande, 259, 271
panacas, 374 Pomona, 69, 70, 80
Pañamarca, 259, 262 Ponciano, Erick, 45
panquetzaliztli veintena, 175, 182, 190 portrait vessels, Moche, 292, 293, 327
Paracas, 243 pottery. See ceramics
Parakanã, 320 Preclassic Maya Lowlands, warfare in, 7, 25–48;
Pareyón, Eduardo, 124 captives, display and sacrifice of, 39–40, 43–45,
Parrot Chaak (La Mar noble), 65, 67, 69, 70 44, 48, 60; Early Middle Preclassic period, 38–43,
parry fractures: Cheqo Wasi mortuary sector, Huari, 39–41; elite, emergence of, 46–47; identity and
240; Huaca de la Luna (Pyramid of the Moon), community established by, 47; institutionalized
Moche, 291, 292 rulership, establishment of, 46; intensification of war
Pashash, 320, 323 throughout, 43–46, 47; landscape of, 61; Late Middle
pastoralism and herding: llacuaz and huari groups, Preclassic period, 43–45, 44; Late Preclassic period,
structural oppositions between, 321, 321–322; at 45–46; Oaxaca and, 118; relationship between social
Yayno, 329, 331 processes and war generally, 25–27; roots of Classic-
Pauketat, Timothy, 2 period warfare and society in, 27, 38, 46–48.
Pax Hispania, 109 predator-prey (master-pet) relations in Recuay and
Pax Incaica, 379 Moche ceramics, 327, 328, 329
Paxbolonacha (ruler of Tamactun), 102–103 predatory expansion model, 118, 119–121, 124, 126, 127,
Pech polity, 104, 106, 107, 114n14 129, 131
Peñoles region, Oaxaca, 121, 123 prisoners. See captives, displayed and sacrificed
pepechtin, 175 “Probanza de los incas nietos de conquistadores,” 375
Pereira, Grégory, 183 Pucarani ceramics, 218, 219
Petén Itzá, 102 Puento, Geronimo, 376
Phillips, Sara, 291 Pukara Juli, 212
pichca/pisca, 319 pukaras: as defensive communities, 209–212, 210; defined
Pichuni Yanapirqa pukara, 214 and described, 207, 208–209; local groups of, 212–218,
Piedras Negras: captives depicted at, 59, 64–65, 65, 66, 213, 214, 216, 217; prevalence in Titicaca Basin, 208,
69–70; evidence of attacks on, 63–64; Hellmuth panel, 208–209; at regional scale, 217, 218–219, 219, 220;
70; landscape of, 61, 62; Moral Reforma and, 70; segmentary organization of, 220–221; territorial
narratives of war and dominance at, 64–70, 65–69, 87; lands, tombs, and chullpas, 211, 212, 213. See also
Panel 2 at, 64–65; Panel 3 at, 65, 67, 68, 70, 85; Panel specific pukaras
4 at, 70; Panel 12 at, 64, 65, 66, 70; Stelae 8 and 9 at, Punta de Chimino, 43, 45
68; Stela 12 at, 33, 68, 69; Stela 15 at, 88n2; Stela 26 at, Puquina Collas, 206
65–68, 68; subordinate lords and political centers, 70, Puruchuco-Huaquerones, 373
71; “subordination panels,“ 64, 65, 66, 67, 74; “warrior- Pye, Mary E., viii
king“ stelae, 65–69, 66, 68, 69, 71 Pyramid of the Moon, Moche. See Huaca de la Luna
Pikillacta, 248–249 (Pyramid of the Moon), Moche
Pinzón, Flory, 39 Pyramid of the Moon, Teotihuacan, 172, 185
pisca/pichca, 319
pits, staked, 108, 109–111, 110, 111, 114n18 Q
Pizarro, Francisco, 367 Qhapaq Qulla, 206
Plain of the Eagles and Jaguars (battlefield metaphor), quecholli veintena, 178, 181
Lienzo de Chiepetlan 1, 159, 160 Quechua terms for war and opposition, 314–319, 315–317
Platt, Tristan, 201, 203 Quemia, 357
Plunket, Patricia, 164 Quetzalcoatl (deity), 26, 178
Pocopocos, 206 Quetzaltenango (Xelajub’), 97–99, 103
Polaco, Oscar, 179 Quiahuitl Tlacatecutli (Lord Rain; ruler of Tlapa-
politics and war, 3–4, 10, 12–13, 388–389; Classic Maya Tlachinollan), 161
conflict and warfare as political act or instrument, Quiahutepec, 155, 160
57–58, 70; formation of states and state systems, Quilter, Jeffrey, 268, 288, 289
390–397; Moche political units, multiple numbers of, Quimimiteopan, 157, 164
260, 270–272; Preclassic lowland Maya, establishment Quiotepec, 124, 125
of institutionalized rulership by, 46; “ritual polity,“ Quitoloma, 368, 370
concept of, 393. See also Inca warfare and political Quixitatzin Chacatecuitl (ruler of Chiepetlan), 157, 158,
strategy; segmentary organization in South-Central 160, 161
Andes Quixitatzin Tlacatecutli (warrior/ruler), 158–160, 161, 162,
Polo de Ondegardo, Juan, 376 165, 166n8

in dex 4 1 7
 R and functions of, 173–174; in funerary contexts, 283;
Lord Rain (Quiahuitl Tlacatecutli; ruler of Tlapa-
Tlachinollan), 161
rain god impersonators in Oaxaca, 131–132, 132
rayamiento, 172
Recuay: ceramics, 322, 323, 326, 328, 329, 331; deer
imagery, 326; gaming boards or maquetas, 319, 320;
Moche warfare and captive sacrifice, 265, 270, 277,
286; predator-prey (master-pet) relations in, 327,
328; relationships with Moche, 257, 271, 322; social
organization and conflict, relationship between, 322–
327, 323–326, 328, 329, 334; stone sculptures of ancestor
warrior figures, 322, 323, 326, 327, 335n6; Yayno site,
320, 329–334, 330–333
Redmond, Elsa, 121, 124, 128, 129, 134
reducción of St. Tomas (1570), 357
Relación geográfica de Chiepetlán (1777), 151, 166n8
Relación geográfica de Tlaxcala, 150
Relaciones geográficas de Indias, 374
religion and warfare: Aztec warfare, patron deities of,
147; morality of war, gods’ ambiguity regarding, 26; in
Oaxaca, 131–134, 132, 133; “ritual polity,” concept of, 393;
sacrifice and, 173, 387; Teotihuacan, religious life at, 173
Restall, Matthew, 7, 93, 386, 405–406
Retalteco Lintel 1, 82
Revolt of the Objects mural, Huaca de la Luna (Pyramid
of the Moon), Moche, 299
Río Viejo, 125, 128, 131
Riocajas, battle of (1534), 114n18
ritual or ceremonial acts associated with Classic Maya
conflict and warfare, 33–36, 34, 35
ritual or ceremonial combat, 386–387; Maya “Star
Wars,” 9; tinku or tinkuy, 2, 14n1, 202–203, 286, 288,
314, 317–318, 319, 325, 354; xochiyaoyotl (flower wars),
Aztec, 9, 129, 172, 265. See also Moche ritual combat
and sacrifice
“ritual polity,” concept of, 393
ritual sacrifice. See captives, displayed and sacrificed;
sacrifice
Rivera, Silvia, 202
Rivera y Maestre, Miguel, 99
Robertson, Donald, 151
rock art, 206
Rodríguez de Caraveo, Juan, 114n10
Román, Otto, 38
Román Berrelleza, Juan, 183
Roscoe, Paul, 201, 215
Rosenswig, Robert, 43
Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, María, 377
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, vii
Rumicucho, 371
Rumiñahui (Inca general), 114n18
Runciman, Gary, 396
S 297–299
sacrifice: of animals, 183; autosacrifice, 2, 123, 131;
bloodletting and bloodletting kits, 79, 123;
classification of victims of, 175; complex purposes
4 18 in de x
methods of, 174; Mexica sacrificial practices, 172–175;
not related to war, 171, 172, 175; religion and, 173, 387.
See also captives, displayed and sacrificed; Templo
Mayor, Tenochtitlan
Sahagún, Bernardino de, 147, 148, 149, 151, 320
Sak Tz’i’, 68
San Andrés Semetabaj, burials at, 45
San Bartolo murals, 46
San Bartolomé Tlaquiltepec calendrical stone, 164,
164–165
San Francisco de Arriba, 125, 127, 128
San Ildefonso, 260, 268, 270, 272–274, 274, 276
San Isidro, 43
San José de Moro: burials found at, 260, 264, 268, 269,
275, 275–276; lack of evidence of violent death in,
269, 274; maquetas from, 275, 276; as polity, 270, 271,
272; priestess burials, 264, 268, 275–276; sacrifice of
captives and, 301, 302
San José Mogote, danzantes at, 6–7
San Lorenzo Olmec, 118
San Pedro de Atacama, 244
Santa Elena (Tabasco), 64, 66, 69, 79–80
Sarmiento de Gamboa, Pedro, 366, 374–379
scaffolds, captives displayed on, 33–36, 35, 43–45, 44
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, 25
Scherer, Andrew, vii, 1, 7, 57, 63, 386, 388, 391, 406
Schreiber, Katharina, 368
segmentary organization in South-Central Andes,
8, 199–221; Andean societies generally, 201–204;
ayllus and moieties, 201–203, 212, 221n1–2; Chola
and Vijayanagara empires, Hindu southern India,
compared, 392, 394; Colla of Lake Titicaca Basin,
204, 204–209, 205, 207, 208, 218, 220; concept of
segmentary organization, 200–201; conflict and
confederation at multiple scales characterizing, 199–
200; critiques of segmentary organization concept,
201; geography and warfare patterns influencing, 221;
señoríos étnicos or ethnic territories (chiefdoms), 199,
205. See also pukaras
Seibal. See Ceibal
Señora de Cao nose ornaments, 262
señoríos étnicos or ethnic territories (chiefdoms), 199, 205
Serpent-Heron (Aztacohuatzin; Aztec ruler), 157, 165,
166n8
Sherman, R. Jason, 121, 126
Shield Jaguar III (Yaxchilan ruler), 59, 71, 73, 77–79, 80,
81. See also Itzamnaaj Bahlam III (Yaxchilan ruler)
Shield Jaguar IV (Yaxchilan ruler), 77, 80, 81, 86, 87
Shimada, Izumi, 271, 292
Sillustani and Sillustani ware, 206, 208, 219
Sipán, 268, 289, 301, 302
Site R Lintels 1–6, 82
skeletons, defleshed, suspension and display of, 295–299,
skulls. See decapitation and decapitated heads
slaves and slave trade, 174
sling stones, 369
social organization and conflict, 386–388; Bonampak
murals, 27, 29, 30, 33; Classic Maya conflict and
warfare, 27; in Classic Maya Lowlands, 27–28; general
relationship between, 25–27; Inca warfare and
political strategy, 319, 321; Kuelap, skeletal data from,
341, 357; Preclassic Maya Lowlands, warfare in, 25–27;
Wari empire, social and domestic violence related to
militarism in, 250
social organization and conflict in northern Peru, 8,
311–334; enemy others, social role of, 313–314, 321,
322, 327; hunting and warfare, 313, 325–326, 326;
Kuelap site, 341, 357; language, use of terms for war
and opposition in, 314–319, 315–318, 320; map, 312; in
Moche-Recuay relationships, 322–327, 323–326, 328,
329; predator-prey (master-pet) relations in ceramics,
327, 328, 329; predatory warfare, 320–322, 321; prestige,
warrior class accumulating, 313; resources, warfare as
means of acquiring, 313; structural oppositions, 311,
314, 321, 321–322; at Yayno, 320, 329–334, 330–333
Sola Valley, Oaxaca, 121, 123, 124
soldiers, professional, 4. See also warriors and military
organizations
Sora, 368
Soriano, Walter Espinoza, 343
Sosola, 122, 123
Southall, Aidan, 203
Spanish conquest and colonial period: battlegrounds
of, 9, 14n7; historiography of war in Pre-Columbian
America and, 5, 7; Inca ethnohistorical record and,
373, 374; Kuelap and, 347, 352–353, 353, 355, 356, 357;
mercenaries, conquistadores as, 5; Moctezuma’s
political authority and, 12, 14n11; peace versus
violence in, 112; Puruchuco-Huaquerones skeletal
data and, 373; Zapotec Sierra, 129. See also conquest-
period Maya military strategy and tactics
Spencer, Charles, 121, 124, 126, 128, 129, 134
staked horse pits, 108, 109–111, 110, 111, 114n18
Stanish, Charles, 200
star-shaped maces used at Kuelap, 352, 355, 358n6
status rivalry model of Mesoamerican warfare, 130, 131,
132, 135
structural oppositions, 311, 314, 321, 321–322
Stuart, David, 59
subadults. See children
Sutter, Richard, 292
Swenson, Edward, 275
T Tikal: Burial 120 at, 40; decapitated head deposit at
Tabasco (Santa Elena), 64, 66, 69, 79–80
tableros or gaming boards, 319, 320, 335n3
Talambo canals, 273
Tamactun (Acalan-Tixchel), 94, 95, 102, 111–112
Tamarindito, 33, 42
tambos, 371
Tarascans, 129
Tarma, 368
Taube, Karl, 33, 59, 132
Techálotl (deity), 175
technological aspects of war, 391. See also weapons
Tecolote, 81–82, 82, 84, 85
tecomates, 43
Tecónal (captain of Moquihuix), 178
Tecúm (K’iche’ general), 100, 100–101
Tehuacán Valley, Oaxaca, 124, 125
Tehuantepec, Isthmus of, 121
Codex Telleriano-Remensis, 96
Templo Mayor, Kuelap, 344–345, 346, 355, 356
Templo Mayor, Tenochtitlan: child sacrifice, 171, 175,
180, 182, 183, 189, 190, 191, 192n6; Coyolxauhqui
(deity) and Coyolxauhqui monolith, 175, 176, 177,
178; decapitation and decapitated heads, 174, 180,
184, 184–186, 185, 188, 189, 190, 191; flint knives found
at, 175, 176; heart extraction and throwing bodies
down from, 174; Huitzilopochtli (deity) and, 175, 177,
178, 182, 186, 190, 191; incidence of captive sacrifice
at, 177, 186, 190, 320; jaguar sacrifice, 181, 182–183,
183; Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina stone, 177, 286,
287; number of sacrifices and sacrificial remains at,
180–181; Offering 3 at, 178; Offering 9 at, 183; Offerings
10 and 14, as defeated warriors, 177, 177–180, 179;
Offering 64 at, 184, 185; Offering 111 at, 182, 183, 192n6;
osteobiographical profiles of sacrificial victims from,
186; significance of, 171, 180; skull collection, 186–188,
187, 191; Tízoc stone, 177, 324; trauma analysis of
sacrificial victims, 181–188, 181–189; war, sacrifice, and
ritual at, 175–177; women sacrificed at, 171, 175, 181, 188,
189, 190, 191
Tenango Tepexi (Cozcatepec), 155, 158, 159, 160, 162, 163,
164, 165, 166n8
Tenochca, 149, 153, 155, 165, 166n6
Tenochtitlan, war and sacrifice at, 6, 171–191; Bernal
Díaz del Castillo on, 11; fall of Tenochtitlan, 63;
Lienzo de Chiepetlan 1, 153, 155; Mexica sacrificial
practices, 172–175; Mexica warfare, 171–172; Xipe
Tótec, temple of, 172. See also Templo Mayor,
Tenochtitlan; Tlapanec war
teoatempan tlachinoltempan battlefield concept, 146,
146–148, 148
Teocalli de la Guerra Sagrada, 146
Teotihuacan, 6, 68, 73, 129, 131, 172, 185, 190
Tepanec War, 175
Texcoco, 165
Tezcatlipoca (deity), 26, 177, 178
Thompson, J. Eric, 7
Tihó (later Mérida), 95, 108, 113, 114n16
stairway base, 33; Dos Pilas and, 11; earthworks at, 117;
El Mirador compared, 48; graffiti, 35, 59; Temple IV
Lintel 2 at, 35
Tilcajete, 121, 124, 128, 129, 131, 135
Tiloom (La Pasadita leader), 81, 86
tinku or tinkuy, 2, 14n1, 202–203, 286, 288, 314, 317–318,
319, 325, 354
Tintal, 46
Tipu, 95, 102
in dex 4 19
 Titicaca Basin, 199, 200, 204, 204–209, 205, 211, 212, 215,
218, 219, 221. See also segmentary organization in
South-Central Andes
Title of C’oyoi, 99–100, 102
Title of Saci-Sisal, 107, 114n14–15
Tiwanaku, 204, 206, 244
Tízoc stone, Templo Mayor, Tenochtitlan, 177, 324
tlacaxipehualiztli veintena, 172, 181, 192n1, 314
Tlacolula, 121
Tlacopan, 165
Tlacuilotzin, 155, 163
Tlacuiloyan, 156, 162
Tláloc (deity), 171, 183, 189, 191, 320
Tlaltecuhtli (deity), 186
tlapallacuilolpan omotlali (painted map), 147, 148, 150, 162
Tlapanec war (1460–1487), 6, 143–165; battle for Tlapa,
161–164, 163; conquest of Tlapa-Tlachinollan, 162,
163–165; iconography of Aztec battlefields and,
148–150, 148–150, 159, 160; linking archaeological
sites to Lienzo de Chiepetlan 1, 155–160, 156–151;
operational concept, battlefield as, 144–146; polity
of Tlapa-Tlachinollan, 150; Quixitatzin Tlacatecutli,
theft by daughter of, 162, 165, 166n8; teoatempan
tlachinoltempan battlefield concept, 146, 146–148, 148
Tlatelolco, 149, 150, 173, 177, 178
Tlatzala, 155, 156, 162
Tlaxcala and Tlaxcalans, 2, 101, 150, 172, 265
tlaxochimaco, 175, 192n3
Toci (deity), 174
tombs. See specific locations
tonalli, 180
Tonatiuh (Pedro de Alvarado), 95, 96, 97–102, 103,
107–108, 108, 109
Tonina: captive from, on Temple XVII tablet, Palenque,
71, 72; captive monuments in, 74; rulers subordinate
to, 12, 60, 70; stelae of, 88n2
Topa Inca (Inca ruler), 371, 375, 377, 378
Torres, Elva, 373
Toyne, J. Marla, 8, 341, 344, 372, 386, 406
trade goods and war: Maya and, 43, 57, 64, 70, 102; in
Oaxaca, 119, 129, 130; Tenochtitlan and, 172, 174, 175,
182, 190–191, 389
trepanation, 237, 252, 373
Triadan, Daniela, 33, 37, 38, 40, 43, 60
tribute payments, 12–13, 124, 131, 148, 171–172, 190
Trigo Pampa, 227, 232, 233, 244, 246
trophies and trophy taking, 12; Oaxaca, trophy skulls
in, 130; in Preclassic Maya Lowlands, 39, 40, 46; Wari
trophy heads, 231, 232–233, 244, 246–248, 247, 249
The True History of the Conquest of New Spain (Díaz del
Castillo, 1632 [1908–1916]), 5–6
Tufinio, Moisés, 299, 301
T’ul Chiik (ch’ok ajaw or young royal lord), 65, 67
Tung, Tiffiny A., 8, 12, 227, 386, 387, 406
Tututepec, 122, 123
Tuxpán, 103
tzompantli (skull-racks), 107–108, 108, 124–125, 186, 187,
188
4 2 0 in de x
Tzupam Palace, Iximche’, 107–108
Tz’utujil Maya, 95
U
Ubbelohde-Doering, Heinrich, 275
Uceda, Santiago, 264
Umasuyu, 218
Umberger, Emily, 175, 177, 178
Uraca, 244
urban ambush, as Maya tactic against Spanish, 103–109,
105, 106, 108
Urcid, Javier, 123
Uruñuela, Gabriela, 164
ushnu shrine, 318
Utatlán, battle for (1524), 97, 97–102, 98, 100, 101, 103, 104,
107, 113n5
V
Vandkilde, Helle, 251
Vega, Garcilaso de la, 319, 366
Verano, John, vii, 1, 8, 190, 206–207, 249, 283, 289, 386,
387, 388
Vilque-area pukaras, 213, 215–217, 216, 217, 218, 220
Viracochapampa, 231
Virú peoples, 257, 272
Virú Valley, Tomb of the Warrior Priest, 283
Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo, 327
von Clausewitz, Carl, 57
von Hagen, Adriana, 357
vultures and vulture scavenging, 28, 295, 296, 303n1
W
war in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and the Andes,
vii–viii, 1–13, 385–397; Andean warfare, 7–8, 10 (See
also entries at Moche; Inca warfare and political
strategy; Kuelap, skeletal data from; segmentary
organization in South-Central Andes; social
organization and conflict in northern Peru; Wari
empire); authority, fealty, and tribute, 12–13; Aztec
warfare, 5–6 (See also Aztecs and Aztec warfare;
Tenochtitlan, war and sacrifice at; Tlapanec war);
battlegrounds and battlefields, focus on, 9–10,
63, 144–146, 391; bodies, embattled, focus on,
10–13; captives and sacrifice, 10–13, 386–388 (See
also captives, displayed and sacrificed; sacrifice);
comparative examples (See comparative examples);
defining and conceptualizing, 2–3, 385–386;
historiography of, vii, 5–8, 96; iconography and
epigraphy of, vii, 7, 10, 11, 27; Maya warfare, vii,
7, 10, 389, 396 (See also Classic Maya conflict and
warfare; conquest-period Maya military strategy
and tactics; Maya hieroglyphs; Preclassic Maya
Lowlands, warfare in); Oaxaca, 6–7, 117–135 (See also
Oaxaca warfare in Late/Terminal Formative period);
politics and, 3–4, 10, 12–13, 388–389 (See also politics
and war); risks and dangers of academic study of, 13;
ritual or ceremonial combat, 386–387 (See also ritual
or ceremonial combat); social function of, 386–388
 (See also entries at social organization and conflict); X
source materials and historiography, 5–8, 390; Xe ceramics, 43
visual and performative aspect of, 386–387; warriors Xelajub’ (Quetzaltenango), 97–99, 103
and military organizations, 3–4 (See also warrior Xicalango, 112, 114n20
figurines; warriors and military organizations) Xipe Tótec (deity), 172, 175
Wari empire, 8, 227–252; Chachapoya at Kuelap and, xipeme, 175
345; cranial trauma, violence-related, 227, 232–240, Xiu nobles slaughtered by Cocom at Otzmal (1536),
234–235, 236, 237, 252n1; elites, higher rates of violence 108–109
amongst, 244–246; emergence of, 231; evidence of Xochipilli (deity), 175
violence and violent intentions, 230–231; iconography xochiyaoyotl (flower wars), Aztec, 9, 129, 172, 265
of violence in, 227–229, 231, 242, 243, 247, 248–250, 251; Xocotla, 152, 155, 156, 157, 162, 163, 165
integration of violence and warfare into culture of, Xulnal, 46
227–229, 230, 231–232, 248; militarization of society
in, 229–230, 232; Moche and, 257–259, 271; parry Y
fractures, 240; rates of cranial trauma, 244–246, Yaki, 102
245–246; sites, 227, 228, 229, 232; social and domestic yaomicque (honorable death), Aztec concept of, 147, 180,
violence related to militarism, 250; trophy heads, 320–321
231, 232–233, 244, 246–248, 247, 249; warrior identity, yaotlapallacuilolpan (Aztec battle map), 147, 150, 151, 155,
promoting, 252–252; weapons, 227–229, 239–243, 165, 166n1
240–244 Yaxchilan, 77–87; Bonampak murals and, 87; captives
warrior figurines: Classic lowland Maya, 31–33, 32, 36–37; at, 64, 73, 77, 78, 80, 81; fortification network, 81–85,
Recuay, 329, 331; Wari, 248–249 82–85; Hieroglyphic Stairway 1 at, 80; Hieroglyphic
Warrior Priest, Tomb of the, Virú Valley, 283 Stairway 2 at, 80, 81; Hieroglyphic Stairway 3 at, 77,
warriors and military organizations: bodies of warriors, 79; hieroglyphic stairways generally, 33; landscape
11; compared to labor of childbirth, 320–321; of, 61–62, 81–85, 82–85; Lintel 8 at, 31; Lintel 9 at, 39;
honorable death (yaomicque), Aztec concept of, 147, Lintel 12 at, 39; Lintels 44, 45, and 46 at, 31, 77, 79;
180, 320–321; numbers and ages of warriors available main plaza, 36; Piedras Negras and, 64, 65, 66, 67, 77;
for combat, estimating, 128; prestige, warrior class Stelae 15, 18, 19, and 20 at, 73, 77; Structure 44 at, 77,
accumulating, 313; Recuay stone sculptures of warrior 79; subordinate centers and vassals, 81; tomb below
figures, 322, 323, 326, 327, 335n6; typology of, 3–5 Temple 23 at, 77–79; “warrior-king” monuments, 77
weapons: bows and arrows, 174, 240–243, 241, 242, 352, Yayno, 320, 329–334, 330–333
353; Inca, 365, 368, 369; at Kuelap, 352–353, 353, 354–355, Yivacu, 123
355, 358n6; Moche, 289; obsidian knife and axe from Yopaat Bahlam II (Yaxchilan ruler), 65, 66
tomb under Temple 23, Yaxchilan, 79; obsidian Yoztlamiyahual (deity), 174
points, 240, 241, 243; sling stones, 369; technological Yucatec language, 95, 113
aspects of war and, 391; in Wari empire, 227–229, Yucatec Maya, 95, 103, 104, 107, 108, 113
239–243, 240–244. See also axes; flint knives; maces Yucuita: Monument 1 at, 131, 132; siting of, 130; trophy
Weber, Max, 3, 394, 395 skulls, 130
Webster, David, 7, 107, 113n2, 385–386, 389 Yucunama, 130
Wilson, David, 302 Yugüe, 134
women: cranial trauma from Wari empire, 233, 236, 237–
238, 239–240, 244; at Kuelap, 349–351, 350, 351, 354, 357; Z
sacrificed at Templo Mayor, Tenochtitlan, 171, 175, 181, Zacualpan, 155, 156
188, 189, 190, 191; San José de Moro priestess burials, Zacualpan-Tecomatepec, 155, 156
264, 268, 275–276, 277; social and domestic violence Zapotec empire, 119, 123, 124, 127, 129, 130, 134
related to militarism in Wari empire, 250; warrior Zárate, Agustín de, 378
work compared to labor and childbirth, 320–321 Zender, Marc, 33, 59, 132
Workinger, Andrew, 123, 128 Zultepec, 186
Wright, Henry, 119

in dex 4 2 1
 dumbar ton oak s pre- columbia n
s y mp osia a nd col loquia

published by dumbarton oaks research library

and collection, washington, d.c.

The Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian Symposia Pre-Columbian Metallurgy of South America,

and Colloquia series volumes are based on papers
presented at scholarly meetings sponsored by the
Pre-Columbian Studies program at Dumbarton
Oaks. Inaugurated in 1967, these meetings provide
a forum for the presentation of advanced research
and the exchange of ideas on the art and archaeol-
ogy of the ancient Americas.
Further information on Dumbarton Oaks Pre-
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at www.doaks.org/publications.
edited by Elizabeth P. Benson, 1979
Mesoamerican Sites and World-Views, edited by
Elizabeth P. Benson, 1981
The Art and Iconography of Late Post-Classic
Central Mexico, edited by Elizabeth Hill
Boone, 1982
Falsifications and Misreconstructions of
Pre-Columbian Art, edited by Elizabeth Hill
Boone, 1982

Highland-Lowland Interaction in Mesoamerica:

Dumbarton Oaks Conference on the Olmec, edited
by Elizabeth P. Benson, 1968
Dumbarton Oaks Conference on Chavín, edited by
Elizabeth P. Benson, 1971
The Cult of the Feline, edited by Elizabeth P.
Benson, 1972
Interdisciplinary Approaches, edited by Arthur G.
Miller, 1983
Ritual Human Sacrifice in Mesoamerica, edited by
Elizabeth Hill Boone, 1984
Painted Architecture and Polychrome Monumental
Sculpture in Mesoamerica, edited by Elizabeth
Hill Boone, 1985

Mesoamerican Writing Systems, edited by Early Ceremonial Architecture in the Andes, edited
Elizabeth P. Benson, 1973 by Christopher B. Donnan, 1985

Death and the Afterlife in Pre-Columbian America, The Aztec Templo Mayor, edited by Elizabeth Hill
edited by Elizabeth P. Benson, 1975 Boone, 1986

The Sea in the Pre-Columbian World, edited by The Southeast Classic Maya Zone, edited by
Elizabeth P. Benson, 1977 Elizabeth Hill Boone and Gordon R. Willey, 1988

The Junius B. Bird Pre-Columbian Textile The Northern Dynasties: Kingship and Statecraft in
Conference, edited by Ann Pollard Rowe, Elizabeth Chimor, edited by Michael E. Moseley and Alana
P. Benson, and Anne-Louise Schaffer, 1979 Cordy-Collins, 1990

4 23
 Wealth and Hierarchy in the Intermediate Area,
edited by Frederick W. Lange, 1992
Art, Ideology, and the City of Teotihuacan, edited
by Janet Catherine Berlo, 1992
Latin American Horizons, edited by Don Stephen
Rice, 1993
Lowland Maya Civilization in the Eighth Century
AD, edited by Jeremy A. Sabloff and John S.
Henderson, 1993
Collecting the Pre-Columbian Past, edited by
Elizabeth Hill Boone, 1993
Tombs for the Living: Andean Mortuary Practices,
edited by Tom D. Dillehay, 1995
Native Traditions in the Postconquest World,
edited by Elizabeth Hill Boone and Tom
Cummins, 1998
Function and Meaning in Classic Maya
Architecture, edited by Stephen D. Houston, 1998
Social Patterns in Pre-Classic Mesoamerica, edited
by David C. Grove and Rosemary A. Joyce, 1999
Gender in Pre-Hispanic America, edited by Cecelia
F. Klein, 2001
Archaeology of Formative Ecuador, edited by J.
Scott Raymond and Richard L. Burger, 2003
Gold and Power in Ancient Costa Rica, Panama,
and Colombia, edited by Jeffrey Quilter and John
W. Hoopes, 2003
Palaces of the Ancient New World, edited by Susan
Toby Evans and Joanne Pillsbury, 2004
A Pre-Columbian World, edited by Jeffrey Quilter
and Mary Ellen Miller, 2006
Twin Tollans: Chichén Itzá, Tula, and the
Epiclassic to Early Postclassic Mesoamerican
World, edited by Jeff Karl Kowalski and Cynthia
Kristan-Graham, 2007
4 2 4
Variations in the Expression of Inka Power, edited
by Richard L. Burger, Craig Morris, and Ramiro
Matos Mendieta, 2007
El Niño, Catastrophism, and Culture Change in
Ancient America, edited by Daniel H. Sandweiss
and Jeffrey Quilter, 2008
Classic Period Cultural Currents in Southern and
Central Veracruz, edited by Philip J. Arnold III
and Christopher A. Pool, 2008
The Art of Urbanism: How Mesoamerican
Kingdoms Represented Themselves in Architecture
and Imagery, edited by William L. Fash and
Leonardo López Luján, 2009
New Perspectives on Moche Political Organiza­
tion, edited by Jeffrey Quilter and Luis Jaime
Castillo B., 2010
Astronomers, Scribes, and Priests: Intellectual
Interchange between the Northern Maya Lowlands
and Highland Mexico in the Late Postclassic
Period, edited by Gabrielle Vail and Christine
Hernández, 2010
The Place of Stone Monuments: Context, Use, and
Meaning in Mesoamerica’s Preclassic Transition,
edited by Julia Guernsey, John E. Clark, and
Barbara Arroyo, 2010
Their Way of Writing: Scripts, Signs, and
Pictographies in Pre-Columbian America, edited
by Elizabeth Hill Boone and Gary Urton, 2011
Past Presented: Archaeological Illustration and the
Ancient Americas, edited by Joanne Pillsbury, 2012
Merchants, Markets, and Exchange in the Pre-
Columbian World, edited by Kenneth G. Hirth
and Joanne Pillsbury, 2013
Embattled Bodies, Embattled Places: War in Pre-
Columbian Mesoamerica and the Andes, edited by
Andrew K. Scherer and John W. Verano, 2014