Cycles of defence on the Piedras Negras kingdom periphery: landscape patrimony at the fortified hilltop community of El Infiernito, Chiapas

Abstract

ABSTRACT The modification and reuse of defensive features is a form of landscape patrimony, in which the built environment influences practices of warfare over time, redefining or solidifying the peripheries of political entities or communities. Some Classic period (AD 250–900) Maya kingdoms, including the royal dynasty based at Piedras Negras, Guatemala, relied on local governors and communities to defend peripheral areas and buffer zones between adjacent kingdoms. These boundaries, however, were constantly in flux, and different communities would have played variable roles in defence across time. The fortified hilltop site of El Infiernito, Chiapas, Mexico shows evidence of this practice from its founding as a small, Late Preclassic period (300 BC–AD 250) political centre to its reoccupation as a peripheral hamlet in the Piedras Negras kingdom during the Late Classic period (AD 600–900). This archaeological evidence has implications for how peripheral communities participated in regional political conflict.