Postclassic Period Maya Warfare
The Postclassic is traditionally divided into the Early Postclassic (1000-1200 ce) and the Late Postclassic (1200-1517). The Early Postclassic period is marked by a dramatic reduction in overall population sizes, with many sites having been abandoned by the end of the Terminal Classic period.
There is also a general shift in settlement away from the interior in favour of rivers, lakes and the coast, quite probably so as to take advantage of more reliable food sources and long distance coastal trade and political networks during an extended period of severe drought.Archaeological traces of occupation are more abundant in the Late Postclassic, suggesting population levels had rebounded to some degree compared with the Early Postclassic. Evidence of warfare is also more abundant and comes in the form of greater site nucleation and defensibility, fortifications, mass graves and colonial documents. The fortifications surrounding Tulum and Mayapan are well-known examples. In highland Guatemala, the K’iche’ and Kaqchikel built their capitals of Q'umarkaj and Iximche, respectively, on hilltops surrounded by steep ravines. Evidence in human burials for
Recent Advances in the Archaeology of Maya Warfare violence and warfare during this time includes the remains of numerous sacrificial victims excavated at the gulf coast site of Champoton,[424] a mass grave of desecrated remains at Zacpeten in the Lake Peten-Itza region of Guatemala,[425] and a deposit of forty-eight decapitated skulls at Iximche.[426]
Mayapan had risen to ascendancy in the north-west corner of the northern lowlands and appears to have exerted control over an extensive area. Mayapan-style pottery, specifically Chen Mul modelled effigy incense burners, are common throughout much of the lowlands during this time, and the site was larger than its contemporaries by an order of magnitude.
Evidence for the important role of warfare in geopolitics in the region is abundant and comes from a variety of sources, including art, weapons, burial patterns, injuries in skeletons and ethnohistoric accounts. Mayapan's wall is the ‘largest example of a walled enclosure known in Mesoamerica' and clearly indicates a strong concern with defensibility.[427] Radiocarbon dating of the structure predating and buried within Mayapan's focal ceremonial structure the Temple of Kukulkan places it between 1020 and 1170 (two-sigma calibrated ce).[428] This structure has clear military themes. Its facade preserves stucco figures with exposed ribs and hovering vultures suggesting they represent deceased sacrificial victims. In place of heads are niches where actual skulls had been placed.A series of mass burials at Mayapan date to the latter half of the site's occupation and also around the time of its collapse, indicating that warfare played an important role not just in the site's rise to power but in helping to maintain it, and also in its demise. One of these contained a face-down skeleton of an adult female with the tip of an arrowhead embedded in her right scapula, the only example of a point embedded in bone reported thus far for Mesoamerica.[429] Another mass burial, this time recovered at the entrance to the outlying Itzmal Chen architectural group, contained the burned and butchered remains of at least twenty individuals mixed with numerous Chen
Mul effigy censer sherds and projectile points.[430] It has been suggested that this plaza was associated with the Kowoj social group based on colonial documents mentioning a Kowoj as guardians of Mayapan's eastern gate. The Kowoj social group is better known from colonial accounts from the Peten Lakes region of Guatemala in the central lowlands, which describe it and the Itza as bitter enemies. A mass burial of the desecrated remains of nearly forty individuals excavated recently at Zacpeten has been interpreted as an act of war by the Kowoj against the Itza.[431] This mass burial shares similarities with that recovered from the Itzmal Chen group at Mayapan.
Evidence for abundant warfare also comes from further south in the Guatemalan highlands. Colonial documents describe the K’iche’ as a belligerent social group that ruled over a conquest state by perhaps the thirteenth century. Colonial accounts also describe how their former vassals, the Kaqchikel, broke away and founded their own competing kingdom in around 1470.
In sum, we know little regarding the prevalence of warfare in the century or more between the fall of Chichen Itza and the rise of Mayapan, but rapidly accruing evidence from the subsequent Late Postclassic bears out the long- held view of this period as a time of increased militarism. The renegotiation of social and political relationships following the breakdown of old political orders and large-scale depopulations in the Terminal Classic and Early Postclassic likely played an important role. The widespread adoption of the bow and arrow during this period is well known, but the potentially significant socio-political implications of this technological shift[432] have received little attention. Interestingly, this period coincides with times of increased warfare in North America and the Andes, and hemisphere-wide disruptions to climate may have been a factor as well.[433]