The Technology of Classic Maya War:
Fortifications
Throughout much of the Old World,
cities were characteristically protected by walls, and it is tempting generally
to equate the presence or absence of warfare with the presence of formal
fortifications. Unfortunately, this reasoning does not work for ancient
Mesoamerica. Although some fortified places certainly existed, most political
centers did not have defenses even where warfare was intense (e.g., in the
Postclassic Basin of Mexico). The Spanish did encounter several kinds of Contact
period Maya fortifications. In some cases, political centers were built in
defensible positions such as on islands. Ditches were bug around some centers,
often supplemented by wooden palisades and sometimes dense hedges of thorny
plants. A few centers were surrounded by formal stone walls, probably topped by
palisades. Quickly erected barriers were also positioned along paths in the
forest to delay enemy forces and make them vulnerable to ambush.
Many of these same strategies were
situationally used by the Maya throughout pre-Spanish times but were never universally
present. A major difficulty is archaeological detection of fortifications.
Wooden palisades, plant hedges, or even small ditches might leave few traces,
and in any case the long occupation and continued growth of many Maya centers
probably obliterated fortifications present during earlier phases. My own opinion
is that fortifications were quite common components of the Maya, landscape from
Preclassic to Postclassic times, but other scholars would disagree.
Fortunately, we do have direct archaeological
evidence for many pre-Contact period centers protected by earthworks, ditches,
stone walls and/or palisades, defensible positions, or some combination of
these. One of the earlier known fortifications, the great earthwork at Becan,
was probably built at the end of the Late Preclassic. One of the latest is the
stone wall around the city of Mayapán, abandoned only two generations before
the Spanish arrived. Most known fortifications date to the Postclassic period,
but this is probably as much an artifact of the archaeological record as any
shift in military activity or strategy.
There were several defensive arrangements.
In some cases, whole centers were fortified with artificial barriers as at Becan.
Elsewhere, walls were built only around the innermost monumental cores of
centers. Ridge-top or peninsula sites were defended by walls or ditches. At
Tikal not only the site core but also the immediate hinterland of about 120
square kilometers was protected by ditches and natural swamps. Some ramshackle fortifications,
as at Dos Pilas and Aguateca, were erected around site cores using scavenged
building materials, and obviously represent last-ditch defensive measures.
In all cases fortifications are simple
in design and inexpensive to build, and the Maya seem to have evolved no
distinctive tradition of sophisticated military architecture. Defenses
generally served to protect the ruling apparatus of a polity, and only rarely
any sizable residential population. Very few centers seem to have been fortified
from their beginnings. However amateurish they were by Old World standards,
Maya fortifications were probably quite effective given the low technological
and logistical capabilities of Maya armies. (David Webster, “Ancient Maya
Warfare,” in War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval worlds: Asia, the
Mediterranean, Europe, and Mesoamerica, ed. Kurt Raaflaub and Nathan
Rosenstein [Center for Hellenic Studies Colloquia 3; Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press, 1999], 344-45)
Further
Reading: