Chapter Seven The History of Warfare at Yaxuna ´ James N. Ambrosino, Traci Ardren, and Travis W. Stanton In the early 1960s, political history gained a place in Maya archaeology when it was first established that Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions con- tained historical information (Berlin 1958; Proskouriakoff 1960, 1963, 1964). Much of the potential of this discovery was realized a decade later, when in 1973 the dynastic sequence for the site of Palenque was largely worked out (Mathews and Schele 1974). This in turn led to an explosion of research into the political history of the Classic Maya lowlands, culminating in the appearance of a number of recent syn- theses (Culbert 1991b; Martin and Grube 1995, 2000; Schele and Freidel 1990; Schele and Mathews 1998). One of the significant results of this work was the identification of wars between various Maya poli- ties throughout the lowlands during the Classic period. It has become clear, however, that although some inscriptions record warfare events, there rarely is any mention or even implication of the conduct or scale of that warfare (Stuart 1993:333). Moreover, the known warfare events derive from only a limited number of sites. The bulk of Maya sites do not have written records of warfare, as many contain limited, if any, hieroglyphic inscriptions. This is certainly the case for many of the smaller sites as well as for a number of the larger centers, especially in the northern Maya lowlands. – 109 – .......................... 10276$ $CH7 06-17-03 13:39:30 PS