Maya warfare must have been strongly
seasonal, especially if any large number of commoners was involved. Farmers
could have been efficiently detached from their agricultural pursuits only
during the dry season (roughly December through May in the southern heartland
of the Lowlands), and terrain would have been most passable at this time.
Another consideration was logistics. Unless they were in friendly territory or
had water transport, Maya forces had to carry their food on their backs. Reents-Budet
illustrates a Classic vessel apparently showing elite warriors being helped by
women to load up with arms and provisions for a campaign. Commoner porters may
have carried supplies, but in any case they had to eat, too. This energetic
constraint severely limited the duration and spatial extent of Maya campaigns.
One partial solution was probably to forage for food from dispersed farmsteads
and fields in enemy territory, which would most efficiently have been done just
before the crops were harvested or just after they had been stored. Foraging
for wild resources would have been ineffective to support sizable bodies of
warriors. (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], 347)
Further
Reading:
John
L. Sorenson, "Seasons of War, Seasons of Peace in the Book of
Mormon," in Rediscovering
the Book of Mormon: Insights that you may have missed before
