Wars and Conflicts in Prehispanic Mesoamerica and the Andes

Just like with any other society, past or present, warfare and conflict existed in Mesoamerica. Of less certainty are the causes of those wars, their rituals and their impact on the development of these complex societies. This volume presents the selct proceedings from a conference (Roads to war and Pipes of Peace) held in Brussels in 2002 which aimed to examine the many different sides of Mesoamerican warfare. The ten papers presented here draw on iconographic, epigraphic and archaeological sources to explore the nature of wars across the Andes and Mesoamerica, considering such subjects as the role of kingship, myth and religion in these conflicts and their depiction on works of art and monuments. Three papers in Spanish, the rest in English.