Book Review: Violence and Warfare among Hunter-Gatherers

This edited volume is certainly a “must-read” for anyone interested in the anthropology of violence or the origins of war. Attempting to cover all 19 chapters in a short review would be a recipe for superficiality, so instead I will focus on broader issues. The vast majority of the chapters are data based and constitute the strongest aspect of this book. They examine cases from various continents, sometimes employ innovative methods (e.g., stable isotopes to assess in-group or out-group membership and the analysis of contingency tables by using simulations), mostly consider cases from prehistory, and are interesting reading.

The weakest sections of the book come at the beginning and the end. The theoretical grounding is shallow and sometimes polemic. Because the editors are convinced that war goes way back, they do not fully examine how the topical chapters help to elucidate the patterns of violence and warfare vis-a-vis population growth, sedentism, and social complexity within the last 10,000 years. By contrast, a topical chapter by John Darwent and Christyann Darwent provides a lucid diachronic analysis that contrasts patterns of war and violence in north-western Alaska and the eastern Arctic. The Darwents tie warfare and its absence to ecology and social organization.

The editors assert that nearly all of the case studies “support a long chronology for war and violence” (p. 354)— meaning millions of years. However, the chapters consider the European Paleolithic–Mesolithic transition; as far back as 9,000 BP; 4,000 to 400 BP; 1,000 BP; 2,000 BP; 6,500 to 3,000 BP; back to 5,000 BP; 3,000 BP; 1,180 BP; 900 BP; 6,000 BP; and, finally, a single chapter (by James Chatters) older than 9,000 BP. Because nearly all chapters deal only with the Holocene, the editors’ claims of a long chronology are not based on relevant archaeological data. For Paleoamerican remains dated before 9,000 BP, Chatters reports no violence indicative of warfare and instead concludes that violence was mostly nonlethal, “between members of the same social group,” and that “it would appear that the intent of the conflict was rarely, if ever, to kill the victim” (pp. 81–82). In short, there is absolutely no archaeological data presented in this volume that support a long chronology of warfare, contrary to the conclusions stated by the editors.

The editors contend that some chapters in the mobile forager part of their book show warfare. One problem here is a misplacement of chapters into the nomadic forager section on peoples that were not nomadic but lived in villages and showed signs of social complexity. One such misplaced chapter is by Kenneth Reid on the interior Northwest of North America, which explores “plateau pacifism,” as proposed decades ago by Verne Ray. Of significance, this study shows evidence of “emergent social complexity” (p. 177), with villages, cemeteries, and other features that are atypical of mobile foragers. Reid discusses fortifications, lack of sacked villages, and low level of skeletal trauma, and he concludes that, at 2,000 BP, “the scarcity of such evidence [of group violence], certainly by comparison with neighboring areas, underscores the regional lacunae of organizational features of warfare” (p. 170). Another fascinating chapter by Matthew Des Lauriers focuses on the ethnohistorical and archaeological evidence for warfare on a small island off Baja California. This study cannot be taken as evidence for warfare in mobile foragers either. It has been misclassified because the islanders lived in permanent villages of up to 481 residences. Des Lauriers draws parallels to the complex foragers of the Northwest Coast.

I find it surprising that Lewis Binford’s (2001) magnum opus is not cited. Using a large sample of foragers, Binford (2001: ch. 12) provides an important context for interpreting the studies in this book. Binford demonstrates that, across habitats, low-density foragers use mobility as an adjustment to food acquisition regardless of habitat richness. This finding speaks directly to Paul Roscoe’s chapter on high-density sedentary or semisedentary New Guinea foragers. Binford found that at population densities of about nine persons per 100 square kilometers, a threshold is reached and the population in relation to resources becomes “packed,” which results in shifts toward sedentism and social complexity. New Guinea foragers are “packed” and have no place to move. Generally, concentrated marine or riverine resources vis-a-vis population density leads to more specialized food acquisition strategies, settling down, and ultimately intergroup conflict and probably warfare. It is interesting to consider Binford’s findings in relation to chapters on the resource rich Murray River of Australia, the Baja Island, the Channel Islands Chumash, coastal New Guinea, Prince Rupert Harbour, and north-western Alaska. Reliance on science can move us forward in understanding war and peace whereas “hawk–dove” polemics certainly will not.

Reference Cited