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Thomas Gann and J. Eric Thompson stated in 1937, "The Maya, judging by the scenes depicted upon the stelae, were one of the least warlike nations who ever existed" (Gann and Thompson 1937:63). Large-scale archaeological investigations, epigraphic decipherments, and iconographic studies in the 1960s and 1970s shattered the traditional perception of the Classic Maya as a basically peaceful people (Marcus 1974; Proskouriakoff 1961; Puleston and Callender 1967; Rice and Rice 1981; Webster 1976). The nature, variability, and role in the rise, development, and decline of Classic Maya civilization, nevertheless, have been debated intensively for the past several decades. One group of scholars emphasizes the casual direction from warfare to social and ecological conditions, while another group stresses that warfare was a result of demographic and ecological pressures (Chase and Chase 1989; Cowgill 1979; Demarest 1997; Freidel 1992; Martin and Grube 2000; Schele and Miller 1986; Webster 1977). Some of these discussions have centered on the "collapse" of the Classic Maya civilization. The large-scale multidisciplinary archaeological investigations of the Petexbatún Regional Archaeological Project have demonstrated that intensive warfare was certainly the direct cause of the fall of the Petexbatun kingdoms in the late eighth century and early ninth century (Demarest et al. 1997), although this process is not necessarily applicable to other parts of the Maya Lowlands.
Despite its ubiquity among the Classic Maya, war is difficult to demonstrate archaeologically. In addition to inscriptions and iconography, potentially useful evidence for warfare in the archaeological record includes weapons, fortifications, paleopathology, incidents of violent destruction, and sudden disruption of cultural patterns (Webster 1993:422-423). Unfortunately, the texts that refer to war are not at all explicit about the motives for warfare or about its nature (Stuart 1993:333). Many Classic Maya sites lack either such inscriptions or art relating to the warfare process. Most Classic centers are located in easily accessible terrains without fortifications, and they generally lack clear evidence of destruction resulting from battles.
We still lack systematic studies of Maya weaponry. Both detailed analysis of the use of chipped stone weapons, particularly using the high-power approach developed by Lawrence Keeley (1980), and studies of temporal and spatial distribution of possible weapons in the regional settlement system remain to be conducted in Maya archaeology. This paper aims to fill...