Wars and Conflicts in Prehispanic Mesoamerica and the Andes

Description

This volume gathers papers originally presented at a conference held in Brussels on November 16-17, 2002 by the Société des Américanistes de Belgique with the collaboration of Wayeb (the European Association of Mayanists), aimed at establishing a diachronic intercultural map of the ways rivalry manifests itself in the Americas. The papers cover a broad swathe geographically-from Mesoamerica to the Andes-and chronologically from early cultures to the Contact period. The selection presented is heterogeneous, and gives priority to the exposition of data and to the very definition of what is considered as war and conflict, and how war and conflict are approached through the archaeological record. Topics covered range from archaeological evidence for internal conflicts and wars, to religious and mythic aspects of warfare, to iconography and the symbolic representation of violence, to analyses of fortifications and weaponry and beyond.