Violence and Warfare among Hunter-Gatherers

How did warfare originate? Was it human genetics? Social competition? The rise of complexity? Intensive study of the long-term hunter-gatherer past brings us closer to an answer. The original chapters in this volume examine cultural areas on five continents where there is archaeological, ethnographic, and historical evidence for hunter-gatherer conflict despite high degrees of mobility, small populations, and relatively egalitarian social structures. Their controversial conclusions will elicit interest among anthropologists, archaeologists, and those in conflict studies. Part 1 A Neglected Anthropology: Hunter-Gatherer Violence and Warfare; Chapter 1 Hunter-Gatherer Conflict: The Last Bastion of the Pacified Past?, Mark W. Allen; Chapter 2 Forager Warfare and Our Evolutionary Past, Steven A. LeBlanc; Part 2 Violence and Warfare among Mobile Foragers; Chapter 3 Violence and Warfare in the European Mesolithic and Paleolithic, Virginia Hutton Estabrook; Chapter 4 Wild-Type Colonizers and High Levels of Violence among Paleoamericans, James C. Chatters; Chapter 5 Hunter-Gatherer Violence and Warfare in Australia, Mark W. Allen; Chapter 6 Conflict and Territoriality in Aboriginal Australia: Evidence fromConflict and Interpersonal Violence in Holocene Hunter-Gatherer Populations from Southern South America, Florencia Gordón; Chapter 8 Warfare and Expansion: An Ethnohistoric Perspective on the Numic Spread, Mark Q. Sutton; Chapter 9 Wait and Parry: Archaeological Evidence for Hunter-Gatherer Defensive Behavior in the Interior Northwest, Kenneth C. Reid; Chapter 10 Scales of Violence across the North American Arctic, John Darwent, Christyann M. Darwent; Chapter 11 The Spectre of Conflict on Isla Cedros, Baja California, Mexico, Matthew R. Des Lauriers; Part 3 Violence and Warfare among Semisedentary Hunter-Gatherers; Chapter 12 Foragers and War in Contact-Era New Guinea, Paul (Jim) Roscoe; Chapter 13 Middle and Late Archaic Trophy Taking in Indiana, Christopher W. Schmidt, Amber E. Osterholt; Chapter 14 TheArchaic Violence in Western North America: TheStable Isotope Perspectives on Hunter-Gatherer Violence: Who's Fighting Whom?, Jelmer W. Eerkens, Eric J. Bartelink, Karen S. Gardner, Traci L. Carlson; Chapter 17 The Technology of Violence and Cultural Evolution in the Santa Barbara Channel Region, James M. Brill; Chapter 18 Updating the Warrior Cache: Timing the Evidence for Warfare at Prince Rupert Harbour, Jerome S. Cybulski; Part 4 Synthesis and Conclusion; Chapter 19 The Prehistory of Violence and Warfare among Hunter-Gatherers, Terry L. Jones, Mark W. Allen;