Abstract
Interdisciplinary study of the role of violence in the Mediterranean and Europe. The Archaeology of Violence is an interdisciplinary consideration of the role of violence in social-cultural and sociopolitical contexts. The volume draws on the work of archaeologists, anthropologists, classicists, and art historians, all of whom have an interest in understanding the role of violence in their respective specialist fields in the Mediterranean and Europe. The focus is on three themes: contexts of violence, politics and identities of violence, and sanctified violence. In contrast to many past studies of violence, often defined by their subject specialism, or by a specific temporal or geographic focus, this book draws on a wide range of both temporal and spatial examples and offers new perspectives on the study of violence and its role in social and political change. Rather than simply equating violence with warfare, as has been done in many archaeological cases, the volume contends that the focus on warfare has been to the detriment of our understanding of other forms of "non-warfare" violence and has the potential to affect the ways in which violence is recognized and discussed by scholars, and ultimately has repercussions for understanding its role in society.
... Este fenómeno multidimensional, históricamente contingente y especifico en el tiempo y en el espacio, adquiere su significado en el contexto cultural e histórico en donde se circunscribe. Por consiguiente, no todos los actos de violencia son expresados, comprendidos, ni experimentados de manera idéntica por todos los individuos de la misma población o de diferentes poblaciones; lo que para unos es un comportamiento violento para otros no lo es, así como, lo que hoy consideramos violencia es probable que en el pasado no haya sido castigado o definido de esa manera (Koziol, 2017;Scheper-Hughes y Bourgois, 2004;Ralph 2013). ...
... Este hecho ha disminuido la comprensión de otras formas de violencia en muchos estudios arqueológicos y antropológicos (Klaus, 2012;Pérez, 2012;Ralph, 2013), mostrando solo el aspecto sensacionalista y haciendo ver esta como un mal necesario o como un comportamiento abominable (Martin et al., 2012). ...
La violencia tiene una larga historia en nuestra especie, ha impactado las experiencias de vida de todos los seres humanos desde el paleolítico —o incluso antes— hasta nuestra época; es, ha sido y seguirá siendo parte de la existencia humana (Keeley, 1996, 2014; Guilaine y Zammit, 2005; Gat, 2006; Tooby y Cosmides, 1988). Este fenómeno multidimensional, históricamente contingente y especifico en el tiempo y en el espacio, adquiere su significado en el contexto cultural e histórico en donde se circunscribe. Por consiguiente, no todos los actos de violencia son expresados, comprendidos, ni xperimentados de manera idéntica por todos los individuos de la misma población o de diferentes poblaciones; lo que para unos es un comportamiento violento para otros no lo es, así como, lo que hoy consideramos violencia es probable que en el pasado no haya sido castigado o definido de esa manera (Koziol, 2017; Scheper-Hughes y Bourgois, 2004; Ralph 2013).
... The 1990s saw an explosion of new interest in past violence, eventually published in a number of papers and anthologies (e.g . Carman 1997;Carman and Harding 1999;Guillaine and Zammit 2005;Otto, Thrane and Vandkilde 2006;Ralph 2012;Zimmermann 2009). ...
... Yet, so far, the archaeology of violence rarely dealt with gender. In recent edited volumes, The Archaeology of Violence (Ralph 2012) includes only one paper that explicitly touches upon this subject, and Extreme Formen von Gewalt in Bild und Text des Altertums (Zimmermann 2009) pays little attention to gender in its account of extreme violence. ...
... Existen notables debates científicos y sociales, especialmente desde la antropología, y ahora desde la arqueología, sobre la naturaleza, causas y orígenes de la violencia (Clastres 2001;Ralph 2013;Dwyer 2022, 5). Pero más allá de tales discusiones académicas, lo que queda claro es que la violencia surgió desde muy temprano y ha permanecido en la historia de la humanidad a lo largo de diversas regiones del mundo (Fagan et al. 2020, Graeber y Wengrow 2022, González-Ruibal 2023. ...
Los arqueólogos excavamos el presente del pasado. Aunque resulte un lugar común señalar que somos los investigadores del pasado por antonomasia, vale la pena recordar(nos) que siempre excavamos e investigamos en y desde el presente: lo hacemos desde nuestra contemporaneidad. Sin embargo, la arqueología estratégicamente se ha distanciado del presente por varias razones, aunque las más importantes, y a la vez menos explícitas, son las razones políticas. Y es que desvincularse del presente supone, propone y naturaliza una falta de compromiso político con lo que se hace, con nuestra práctica arqueológica, pero, más importante, con nuestra sociedad de la cual hemos surgido y en la que habitamos.
... As mentioned, the male bias in the influx of steppe ancestry (Goldberg et al. 2017) is contentious (Lazaridis and Reich 2017), and an uptick in violence during the third millennium BC cannot be inferred from two mass graves. Such finds have been made throughout prehistory (e.g., Carman and Harding 1999;Ralph 2013;Thorpe 2003), and to make inferences about trends and changing levels of violence from skeletal materials, one has to systematically collect and quantify signs of violence on human bones in the archaeological record. For modern Germany, such an endeavor has been undertaken by Peter-Röcher (2007), who collected and discussed skeletal materials with signs of injuries through the prehistoric periods. ...
This paper discusses and synthesizes the consequences of the archaeogenetic revolution to our understanding of mobility and social change during the Neolithic period in Europe (6500–2000 BC). In spite of major obstacles to a productive integration of archaeological and anthropological knowledge with ancient DNA data, larger changes in the European gene pool are detected and taken as indications for large-scale migrations during two major periods: the Early Neolithic expansion into Europe (6500–4000 BC) and the third millennium BC “steppe migration.” Rather than massive migration events, I argue that both major genetic turnovers are better understood in terms of small-scale mobility and human movement in systems of population circulation, social fission and fusion of communities, and translocal interaction, which together add up to a large-scale signal. At the same time, I argue that both upticks in mobility are initiated by the two most consequential social transformations that took place in Eurasia, namely the emergence of farming, animal husbandry, and sedentary village life during the Neolithic revolution and the emergence of systems of centralized political organization during the process of urbanization and early state formation in southwest Asia.
... As John Carman has pointed out, violence "is something of which all human beings seem to be capable, and at the same time an attribute of humanity that we would choose to deny" (Carman 1997, 2). Recent scholarship has yielded noteworthy studies analyzing and contextualizing violence in past cultures throughout the world (Knüsel and Smith 2013; Martin and Frayer 1997;Martin, Harrod, and Pérez 2012;Porter and Schwartz 2012;Ralph 2013;Redfern 2017). Intraspecies violence has existed for at least as long as modern Homo sapiens has walked the planet, and the occurrence, and indeed prevalence, of violence in seemingly every human society through time has led many scholars to suggest that violence is in some way an integral part of the biological makeup of humankind (Berger and Trinkaus 1995;Eller 2010;Turpin and Kurtz 1997;Zollikofer et al. 2002). ...
... 1 Mainly weapons, traces of sudden destruction in abandoned settlements, mass graves and specific burials attributed to violent deaths, as well as figurative representations (paintings, engravings, etc.) of weapons, armed individuals and scenes of combat, execution and sacrifice (Lull et al., 2006). (2017), García Piquer and Vila (2016), Guilaine and Zammit (2001), Keeley (1996), Martin and Frayer (1997), Meller and Schefzik (2015), Otto et al. (2006), Pathou-Matis (2013), Ralph (2012). 3 I focus here only on forms of physical violence that have a ceremonialized expression ('executions', 'sacrifices'). ...
The explanation of the worldwide spread and long-term maintenance of economic asymmetries and centralized and hierarchical political structures is a major concern for sociological and humanistic disciplines. This problem may be formulated as a paradox when exploited and victimized groups overtly support the social order that subdues them. Archaeology is able to address this problem from a broad and long-term perspective. The aim of this paper is to discuss the implications of public, lethal physical violence in the context of class societies. These are characterized by economic exploitation, centralization of political power, labour specialization and heavy restrictions of vital and cognitive perspectives for most of the population. It is suggested that key social relations under these conditions could be similar to the hostage-captor bond. Henceforth, inferences based on social and psychobio-logical reasoning are suggested in order to solve the aforementioned social paradox.
... Freeman and Pollard, 2001;Pollard and Banks, 2005;Scott et al., 2009). It has its origins in the study of battlefields and other conflict-related phenomena in the modern and pre-modern periods (Meller, 2009;Saunders, 2012;Schofield, 2009;Scott and McFeaters, 2011), but numerous studies have already shown that this theme, and at least some of its methods, techniques and theories, are also relevant for older historical and even prehistoric periods (Buchsenschutz et al., 2014;Carman, 2014;Carman and Harding, 1999;Guilaine and Sémelin, 2016;Link and Peter-Röcher, 2014;Meller and Schefzik, 2015;Otto et al., 2006;Ralph, 2013). The research domain has a wide geographic and temporal scope, from early prehistory up until modern times. ...
... In the general topic on war in the prehistory, we will quote only main works after Keeley [6] which created a break with the '70s and' 80s, combining archeology and anthropology beyond the Neolithic to the Bronze Age and combine archaeological data with paleopathology in the theme of the prehistoric warfare: so, Gulaine & Zammit [7] which extend the investigation, iconography in rock art and cultural anthropology; Haas [8] analyze the connection between warfare and social evolution; Parker Pearson & Thorpe [9], who coordinated multidisciplinary work on violence and the warfare between early prehistory and protostory under archaeological, primatological, paleodemographic and paleopathological aspects; Otto, Thrane & Vandkilde [10] which in a general and multidisciplinary analysis of the relationship between the warfare and the human society, gives a certain space to the pre and protohistoric period; Ralph [11] which together with other authors makes a panorama of the archaeological traces of violence from prehistory to medieval age; Fry (2013), who together with other authors takes into account the violent or peaceful nature of mankind in an evolutionary context; Hallen & Jones [12] who examine with other authors the origin of violence in mankind by analyzing the communities of today's hunter-gatherers, and Vander worker & Wilson [13] who in a work with other authors deal with the theme of the relationship between the archeology of warfare and of food in daily, cultural, ritual and technical aspects but only in anthropological data on today traditional societies. ...
... His plea has been heeded: the last 20 years have seen a renewed interest in prehistoric interpersonal violence in Europe (e.g. Armit et al. 2013;Carman 1997;Harding 2007;Parker Pearson and Thorpe 2005;Ralph 2013;Schulting and Fibiger 2012;Thorpe 2003Thorpe , 2013Uckelmann and Mödlinger 2011). With regard to the Bronze Age, the subject has been approached from different angles including the study of combat injuries detectable on human skeletons and how these can shed light on the nature and frequency of interpersonal violence (Dočkalová 1990;Fyllingen 2003Fyllingen , 2006Jantzen et al. 2011); reappraisals of the image and self-understanding of the Bronze Age warrior from funerary evidence, rock art and contemporary body theory (Harrison 2004;Treherne 1995); and, more interestingly for the purpose of this chapter, martial-arts approaches that tested possible uses of prehistoric weaponry and armour in controlled field experiments and tried to validate the test results through the examination of the combat marks found on actual Bronze Age weapons (Anderson 2011;Bridgford 1997;Kristiansen 2002;Molloy 2004;O'Flaherty et al. 2011). ...
Despite the wealth of recent research into prehistoric warfare, our knowledge of how early weapons were handled and used in combat encounters remains limited. The Bronze Age Combat Project aims to investigate the problem through a combination of wear analysis of prehistoric swords, spears, and shields from various UK museum collections and through extensive, rigorous field tests with purpose-built replica weapons. The chapter discusses the multidisciplinary research approach devised by the team. The focus is on the development of our research methodology and experiments. We review our experimental methodology in the light of previous tests with replica weapons and highlight the advantages and shortcomings of our own approach to weapon testing.
... Its low impact (very few, if any, references) on the otherwise thriving genre of war studies is illustrated when leafing through a number of anthologies: e.g. those of Carman & Harding (1999); Osgood et al. (2000); Otto et al. (2006); Ralph (2013). Given this essay's heading and principal message, it is surprising that warrior studies show up in such a low proportion in the statistics, but this may relate to warriors being rather marginal to the current rise in warfare studies. ...
Over the (slightly more than) two decades that the European Journal of Archaeology (formerly the Journal of European Archaeology ) has been in print, we have published a number of excellent and high profile articles. Among these, Paul Treherne's seminal meditation on Bronze Age male identity and warriorhood stands out as both the highest cited and the most regularly downloaded paper in our archive. Speaking informally with friends and colleagues who work on Bronze Age topics as diverse as ceramics, metalwork, landscape phenomenology, and settlement structure, I found that this paper holds a special place in their hearts. Certainly, it is a staple of seminar reading lists and, in my experience at least, is prone to provoke heated discussions among students on topics as far ranging as gender identity in the past and present, theoretically informed methods for material culture studies, and the validity of using Classical texts for understanding prehistoric worlds. Moreover, in its themes of violence, embodiment, materiality, and the fluidity or ephemeral nature of gendered identities, it remains a crucial foundational text for major debates raging in European prehistoric archaeology in the present day.
... Peaceful pre-state societies were very rare; warfare between them was very frequent and most adult men in such groups saw combat repeatedly in a lifetime (1996,174). Since then, we have witnessed the proliferation of studies on violence, both from a cross-cultural and ethnographic perspective (Allen and Jones 2014; Chacon and Mendoza 2007;Lambert 2002;Hill 2007) and from a prehistoric one based on a reading of the archaeological and bioarchaeological record in a variety of territories and chronologies (Arkush 2011;Dye 2009;Knüsel and Smith 2014;LeBlanc, 1999;Martin et al 2012;Milner et al 1991;Ralph 2012;Rice and LeBlanc 2001;Walker 2001). ...
The long-standing debate over the origins of violence has resurfaced over the last two decades. There has been a proliferation of studies on violence, from both cross-cultural and ethnographic and prehistoric perspectives, based on a reading of archaeological and bioarchaeological records in a variety of territories and chronologies. The vast body of osteoarchaeological and architectural evidence reflects the presence of interpersonal violence among the first farmer groups throughout Europe, and, even earlier, between hunter-gatherer societies of the Mesolithic.
The studies in Beyond War present the necessity of rethinking the concept of “violence” in archaeology. This overcomes the old conception that limits violence to its most evident expressions in war and intra- or extra-group conflict, opening up the debate on violence, which allows the advancement of knowledge of the social life and organization of prehistoric societies. Determining archaeological indicators to identify violent practices and to analyse their origin and causes is fundamental here, and represents the only way to find out when and under what historical conditions prehistoric societies began to organize themselves by exercising structural violence.
http://www.cambridgescholars.com/beyond-war
... Pits and enclosures must certainly be included for a more complete understanding of the extent and variety of violent practices during this period. To achieve that, future studies will have to incorporate the results of other contemporary research on the archaeology of violence and warfare (Martin et al. 2012;Schulting & Fibiger 2012;Allen & Jones 2014;Ralph 2014), as well as that from unique and challenging discoveries such as pit 157. ...
Between c. 4500 and 3500 BC, the deposition of human remains within circular pits was widespread throughout Central and Western Europe. Attempts at forming explanatory models for this practice have proven difficult due to the highly variable nature of these deposits. Recent excavations at Bergheim in Alsace have revealed a particularly unusual variant of this phenomenon featuring a number of amputated upper limbs. The evidence from this site challenges the simplicity of existing interpretations, and demands a more critical focus on the archaeological evidence for acts of systematic violence during this period.
... Some researchers have used a theory called " parochial altruism " which posits that males who cooperate with in-group members but act with hostility to out-group members may have a selective advantage (Choi and Bowles, 2007;Durrant, 2011;Bowles and Gintis, 2013). While this broad narrative generally describes interpersonal violence in the form of small-scale warfare, feuds, raids and skirmishes (see for numerous archaeological examples of warfare and early violenceArkush and Allen, 2006;Nielsen and Walker, 2009b;Ralph, 2013), the bioarchaeological data adds a great deal of information and provides ways to distinguish and show nuance in how early warfare and raiding worked in different settings. The following case studies provide an indication of how this kind of violence is documented and interpreted. ...
The bioarchaeological record has an abundance of scientific evidence based on skeletal indicators of trauma to argue for a long history of internal and external group conflict. However, the findings also suggest variability, nuance, and unevenness in the type, use, and meaning of violence across time and space and therefore defy generalizations or easy quantification. Documenting violence-related behaviors provides an overview of the often unique and sometimes patterned cultural use of violence. Violence (lethal and nonlethal) is often associated with social spheres of influence and power connected to daily life such as subsistence intensification, specialization, competition for scarce resources, climate, population density, territorial protection and presence of immigrants, to name just a few. By using fine-grained biocultural analyses that interrogate trauma data in particular places at particular times in reconstructed archaeological contexts, a more comprehensive view into the histories and experiences of violence emerges. Moreover, identifying culturally specific patterns related to age, sex, and social status provide an increasingly complex picture of early small-scale groups. Some forms of ritual violence also have restorative and regenerative aspects that strengthen community identity. Bioarchaeological data can shed light on the ways that violence becomes part of a given cultural landscape. Viewed in a biocultural context, evidence of osteological trauma provides rich insights into social relationships and the many ways that violence is embedded within those relationships. Yrbk Phys Anthropol, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Archaeology has long studied violence in the past through a modern and sexist lens. Current debates in gender archaeology are increasingly clarifying on these issues, by both studying the complex entanglements of violence and gender in various prehistoric and historic societies, and raising awareness on gendered violence within the field and ancient source material. This chapter will address the complex entanglements of violence and gender in the past.
We argue in favour of not only examining gender and violence through biology, but in specific socio-culturally constructed gender systems. This chapter will tackle methodological problems behind the studies of “warrior women” arguing that the same criticism applies to “warrior men”. In line with the most recent debates, the paper presents cases for archaeological studies of gender as symbolic and structural violence, but also sexual violence, gender as a frame of war and its role in colonial violence.
In this article, I investigate the ways in which Jewish Israeli anti-occupation activists express reluctance to throwing stones during the regular Friday protests in various Palestinian villages. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, I highlight their feelings of confusion and ambiguity regarding the issue of stone-throwing, which reflect the contradictory demands placed upon them as both Israelis and activists. I argue that the ambiguity they express cannot be analyzed in an ideological, social, or political vacuum; rather, it should be understood in relation to their hopes, expectations, and disappointments, which are situated within particular political imaginaries and projects, ideological prisms, and cultural topoi . This article aims to analyze the ways in which domination and power structures are both challenged and reinforced within the context of political protest.
How old is war? Is it a deep-seated propensity in the human species or is it a recent cultural invention? This article investigates the archaeological evidence for prehistoric war across world regions by probing two competing hypotheses. The “deep roots” thesis asserts that war is an evolved adaptation that humans inherited from their common ancestor with chimpanzees, from which they split around seven million years ago, and that persisted throughout prehistory, encompassing both nomadic and sedentary hunter-gatherer societies. In contrast, the “shallow roots” viewpoint posits that peaceful intergroup relations are ancestral in humans, suggesting that war emerged only recently with the development of sedentary, hierarchical, and densely populated societies, prompted by the agricultural revolution ~ 12,000–10,000 years ago. To ascertain which position is best supported by the available empirical evidence, this article reviews the prehistoric archaeological record for both interpersonal and intergroup conflict across world regions, following an approximate chronological sequence from the emergence of humans in Africa to their dispersal out of Africa in the Near East, Europe, Australia, Northeast Asia, and the Americas. This worldwide analysis of the archaeological record lends partial support to both positions, but neither the “deep roots” nor the “shallow roots” argument is fully vindicated. Intergroup relations among prehistoric hunter-gatherers were marked neither by relentless war nor by unceasingly peaceful interactions. What emerges from the archaeological record is that, while lethal violence has deep roots in the Homo lineage, prehistoric group interactions—ranging from peaceful cooperation to conflict—exhibited considerable plasticity and variability, both over time and across world regions, which constitutes the true evolutionary puzzle.
This article is an attempt to understand the ongoing processes of global archaeology during the last two decades. The aim of this article is to identify the most talked-about concepts of the recent period. The article is intended as a retrospective, subjective reflection from the viewpoint of Latvian archaeologist on the latest period of global historiography, seeking to answer the following question: What key concepts are trending in the global archaeological thought, and do they resonate in Latvian archaeology? The author offers a critical view suggesting that the contemporary archaeological thought differs from the previous periods with pluralism, deep specialization and diversity of ideas as well as pronounced discursive radicalization in the form of unexpected criticism of capitalism in the Western intellectual world. The attempts to politicize the discipline is problematized. In the end, it is concluded that the theoretical framework of Latvian archaeology is more conservative than contemporary global archaeology. Even if some new ideas are adapted, it is still not possible to talk about Latvian archaeologist as a public figure, a social or political activist.
A 50 años de la masacre del 2 de octubre de 1968 en el Conjunto Habitacional Nonoalco Tlatelolco, el jefe de gobierno de la Ciudad de México, José Ramón Amieva, firmó un mandato en el que declaraba Tlatelolco como patrimonio cultural intangible, en reconocimiento a los acontecimientos históricos ocurridos ahí, desde su fundación por los aztecas en 1337. En su discurso Amieva dejó claro que los sucesos del 2 de octubre de 1968 formaban parte de la declaratoria, al enfatizar que no se iba a permitir nunca más que un estudiante fuera víctima de agresión, mucho menos desconocer su paradero. Insertar los eventos de 1968 dentro de una declaratoria de patrimonio cultural intangible articula una nueva verdad nacional de la masacre. Esta incorporación gubernamental del acontecimiento dentro de la ahora historia de la izquierda mexicana triunfante puede difuminar su particularidad y su carácter subversivo; de ahí, que algunas voces han alertado sobre ese peligro y apostado por una concepción contracultural del patrimonio para mantener vivo y visible el reclamo de justicia social propio del movimiento del 68.
Historical analysis confirms that immigrants are poorly-rated in most societies. Their position in Finland does not seem to be any different compared to other countries, although Finland is ranked globally as the happiest country. Finnish statutory law ensures the legal rights of citizens regardless of their origin; however, immigrants must face a number of challenges caused by a lack of societal recognition from native Finns. The study explains ‘social justice’ from a theoretical point of view, applying the concept of experiences provided by Renault. Additionally, the study determines the key obstacles faced by immigrants in Finland and searches for suitable practical approaches to improve their status in the society. We argue that the historical consequences of the real facts on migration in Finland are that immigrants are struggling to establish their identities, which then leads to a complex phenomenon of understating their social status. We have applied the Renault concept of experiences of injustice to understand immigrants’ social position and its influences on their settlement in Finland. The principles of this research can equally create sense and trust in public and private-public institutions, as well as promote transparency and conscious equitable treatment towards immigrants alongside other minority groups.
La Osteoarqueología nos ofrece una serie de herramientas metodológicas y de encuadres teóricos con los que aproximarnos mejor a la vida y a la muerte de las poblaciones aborígenes que habitaban las zonas montañosas de Tenerife. Para ello, ofrecemos un estudio realizado sobre 24 restos craneales procedentes de la cueva funeraria de Pino Leris (La Orotava), actualmente depositada en el Laboratorio de Antropología Física de la Universidad de Granada. Así pues, en esta colección esquelética hemos observado alteraciones orales, traumáticas y tumorales, estudiadas mediante técnicas de la Antropología Dental y la Paleopatología. Éstas remiten a una población guanche la cual, a pesar de presentar ciertas enfermedades y signos de llevar a cabo prácticas peligrosas o violentas, tenían una alta esperanza de vida y una dieta mixta bastante equilibrada.
El desarrollo de la Arqueología del conflicto, centrada en el análisis de los campos de batalla y las estructuras relacionadas, y de la Arqueología de la violencia, cuyo campo de acción focaliza el estudio antropológico, cultural y social de los restos humanos asociados a prácticas de muerte traumática, ha permitido en el último decenio una profunda revisión de los parámetros explicativos de los sistemas políticos y territoriales durante la protohistoria, definiendo cada vez con mayor precisión una nueva interpretación delsignificado de los conflictos desde una perspectiva que entiende la práctica de la lucha en todos sus aspectos y actuaciones derivadas como un elemento consustancial al hombre, con independencia del grado de desarrollo y complejidad de la sociedad a la que pertenece, y no una actividad residual como fue interpretada durante mucho tiempo siguiendo una línea de análisis derivada más de los conceptos rousseaunianos que de la documentación arqueológica.
The article is Open Access, please visit the publishers website to download. Thank you!
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ojoa.12212
The archaeology of warfare and violent conflict has made many advances over the past three decades. However, the Funnel‐beaker Culture (TRB) is mostly absent from these discussions and the presence of warriors is assigned to the succeeding periods. This contribution takes a new look at a conspicuous object from northern TRB contexts: the so‐called thick flint points or halberds (dan. dolkstaver). Their functionality as a specialized weapon is discussed through their use wear, contexts and European comparisons. Afterwards the evidence for violent conflict in the region is explored thematically, including paleo‐demography, victims, enemies, and fortifications. Based on this it is argued that warfare existed during the TRB culture and that warriors may emerge in a society that seems of a largely egalitarian structure.
This chapter shows how a perspective of Sandby borg as difficult heritage became increasingly relevant due to stories circulating of a long-term avoidance of the fort. These stories started to be expressed to archaeologists from the instance that the massacre was discovered in 2011 and has been prevailing up until today. I theorize the connection between “space” and “time” in relationship to prehistoric violence, focusing on how prehistoric violence has been separated as both temporally as well as spatially distant, by positioning it into a foreign country. Finally, I contextualize Sandby borg by looking at other cases of violence pertaining to the distant past.
In the Balkans, early national heroes were often smugglers, bandits, and resistant fighters, all at the same time. Distrust toward any form of upper authority is still today a widely shared feeling among ordinary people. When discussing (former) Eastern European politics, such a distrust, whose manifestations are manifold, has been seen as an indication of “backwardness”, as opposed to the modernity embodied by “advanced” Western countries. Borderlands are areas where the “ugly face” of the Balkanist cliché is best emphasized. It is no coincidence that exotic forms of extraterritoriality emerge in outlying regions. The chapter sheds light on the territorial dimension of the abovementioned duplicitous system opposing a formal political world to self-governed peripheries.
This paper proposes a multi-disciplinary approach which can be used to identify captives and the enslaved of Iron Age Britain (seventh century bc – ad first century). It uses a ‘poetics of violence’ perspective which recognizes that violence and warfare are created and enacted through social relations, and encompasses violence for which there is often no archaeological trace. Roman primary sources, bog-bodies and other archaeological evidence from Iron Age Britain and Europe suggest that people in these states of ‘social death’ were used to acquire material goods, employed in the agricultural economy, and their deaths played an important role in episodes of ritual violence. Drawing on research from North America, a series of funerary, isotope, archaeothantology and osteological variables have been identified for this period, and when integrated into an osteobiography, allows for the re-interpretation of many burials and structured deposits encountered in Iron Age settlements and hillforts.
The concepts of human rights and international humanitarian law are relatively recent in the history of humanity, appearing just at the end of the first half of the twentieth century. This chapter focuses on evidence that bioarchaeology can offer to the research of physical violence in the context of conflicts within or between groups which would currently be considered violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. D. L. Martin and R. P. Harrod proposed that a bioarchaeological approach to violence should consider three levels: data extracted from the skeletal remains; analysis of contextual data (culture and environment); and social theory based on ethnography that allows one to formulate and test hypotheses. Bioarchaeology can benefit from clinical and forensic methodologies such as the use of standardized protocols that can help in the comparison of results from other bioarchaeological studies, and the inclusion of exhaustive differential diagnoses that could avoid simplistic deductions.
This chapter presents the idea that the underlying cause of violence is a specific type of epistemology which the author terms ‘violent epistemology’. The chapter presents a detailed a conceptual framework for understanding the specific cognitive mechanisms comprising violent epistemology, and how this is made possible by the nature of human consciousness and its agency. This multidisciplinary formulation draws on neuroscience, psychology, learning theory, and philosophy, including phenomenology and early Frankfurt School critical theory. The author explains how this formulation moves away from current relativistic definitions of ‘epistemic violence’ in which different epistemologies are perceived as having equal ‘truth’ (with the violence occurring when one group or individual’s epistemology is afforded primacy over others), presenting instead the argument that some epistemologies can be more or less violent, and produce more or less ‘truth’ than others, with violence occurring when a more violent epistemology is employed. The role of emotions and motivations in the enactment of violent epistemology is also discussed.
This chapter presents a definition of ideology, positing ideological thought as possessing a specific epistemic structure analogous to violent epistemology. This chapter outlines how the violent epistemology inherent to ideological thought shapes social structures and promotes violent ways of relating with the phenomenal world, ourselves, and others. This includes dominating, controlling, and hierarchical social relationships, the maintenance of ‘in-groups’ and ‘out-groups’, and socially legitimised violence. This chapter also addresses the complex issue of the relationship between structure (social circumstances) and individual agency in the cyclic perpetuation of violence. This involves a discussion of the role that violent epistemology and ‘non-conducive’ circumstances play in the de-formation of subjectivity and the role of subject de-formation in the cyclical perpetuation of non-conducive social circumstances.
Archaeological and anthropological research into prehistoric warfare and violence was long framed by two competing meta-narratives harking back to the work of political philosophers Hobbes and Rousseau. Whereas for some researchers violence is a key part of what makes us human, for others it emerges as a result of specific types of socio-political relationships. This contribution explores the ways in which these competing narratives, as well as Europe’s history of twentieth-century warfare, have influenced the way in which we have approached the subject. The paper argues that a turning point came in the wake of Keeley’s renowned monograph (i.e. War before civilization. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996). This has led to the creation of a vibrant field of specialist research on prehistoric warfare and violence. The authors argue that this field of study can be further advanced through interdisciplinary enquiries bringing together state-of-the-art scientific methods of analysis and contemporary theoretical reflections developed in the humanities and social sciences.
This chapter focuses on the concept of value and its relationship to Bronze Age warfare and violence using the example of cuirasses discovered in armour hoards from French contexts. Cuirasses and hoards of cuirasses are the illustration of a formalised three-part relationship between bronzesmiths, combatants and commissioners in a society that recognised knowledge and resources and promoted sufficient investment in time to manufacture these ‘high-tech’ functional pieces of armour. The cuirasses were made by highly skilled craftspeople and took over 150 h to complete from casting to finishing, using 3–4 kg of raw metal. Their study sheds light on the technological choices made by the bronzesmiths as well as the individual and socially sanctioned creativity observed in the chaîne opératoire of their production. The cuirasses were not only used in combat, as can be seen from the repairs observed on the Marmesse specimens, but were also employed in ritualised depositional practices. They illustrate the link between high-end technological craftwork and the notion of value in a society that significantly invested on warfare and its social representation.
In contrast to the extensive research on social and technological change in the Early Bronze Age the impact of the new technology and of the objects produced with its help on the lifeworld of Early Bronze Age actors has hardly been scrutinised. Since it has become clear that the Bronze Age phases A1 and A2, which traditionally had been understood as a chronological sequence, rather reflect differences in the readiness to accept the new technology, the question arises how early bronzes and their production were perceived. This article investigates in what way practices of coping with technology are recognisable and how the ability to produce quasi identical objects serially might have affected the lifeworlds of users and producers. For the area of the Unetice Culture where Bronze technology fell on fertile ground we can discern, I think, religiously motivated mimetic practices of coping with technology. The novel serial production of quasi identical objects in large numbers and the simultaneously occurring practice of depositing large numbers of identical objects point to a specific new perspective of Bronze Age actors on their material culture. While the want to possess identical objects is already evident prior to the Early Bronze Age, the new technology allowed for ample realisation of this need.
The bronze statuette from Sernai is one of the most significant Bronze Age finds in the East Baltic region. Due to the loss of the statuette during World War II, questions regarding its authenticity and origin have been researched theoretically only. After the rediscovery of one of the figurines feet it has been possible to analyse the statuette scientifically. The results of this investigation are presented in this paper, together with considerations concerning the question of the statuettes date and origin. Despite doubts about the circumstances of its appearance in Lithuania, the authors believe that this find reflects on the one hand close contacts of the East Baltic with Scandinavia and the significance of Scandinavian societies in trade and exchange systems with Central Europe and the Mediterranean, and on the other hand the integration of the East Baltic region within the European socio-economic and ritual koine in the Bronze Age.
The focus in popular and nonanthropological discourse around warfare tends to focus on male warriors, combatants, and soldiers. Yet there is a growing body of literature on the effects of warfare on civilians and noncombatants. This chapter provides an overview to studies and social theories that examine violence, warfare, massacres, and structural violence as integrated parts of cultural systems and not as chaotic and aberrant events bounded in space and time. Understanding the strain that women, children, and others are placed under during periods of warfare has led us to reconsider the label of “noncombatant.” There is a continuum of war effects and it is often difficult to distinguish between combatant/noncombatant and civilian/soldier. War and its effects on trauma, disability, and death should be considered to have ripple effects that move well beyond the number of war dead into short- and long-term effects on vulnerable groups within the larger populations. This holds true for today’s wars, and we are advocating that this was likely true for past wars. Thus to truly understand the origin, evolution, and impacts of war in human history, this more inclusive approach to understand war must be part of the scholarship being produced by bioarchaeologist and archaeologists.
Contemporary bioarchaeological research has the potential to reinforce Westernized stereotypes of gender, positionality, social roles, and interpretations of specific events—inadvertently changing our understandings of these events. The collapse of available social information in the archaeological and bioarchaeological contexts reduces the visibility of multiple complex relationships, where a person might have numerous social experiences reduced into a singular context. There are many established critiques of issues of representation and equifinality in archaeological research; however, with the use of modern warfare (and violence) terminologies, Westernized notions and concepts are again shaping the discourse. Limits in the data available for interpretation may cause us to only consider some types of events (e.g., feuds, raids, battles, war, genocide, sacrifice) based on interpretations of scale, scope, and mode of death which are necessarily shaped by modern understandings and might collapse the intersections between these categories, producing a new narrative for the event. Using this frame also shapes who we would expect to see involved directly versus indirectly in these warring behaviors and therefore might also guide attempts at engendering interpretations by causing some of the contributions to these events to be overlooked. Data from bioarchaeological, classic ethnographic texts, and historical contexts are included in this discussion.
Periodically archaeologists turn their gaze inwards towards their own field, to consider it as a craft activity or as a community of interest in its own right. The phrase ‘archaeological community’ is one widely used but rarely defined, and there is always a tendency towards the division of archaeology into a variety of distinct specialisms: yet one of the major aspects of academic life is in the construction of communities of shared interests. Here I draw upon my own experiences of encouraging others to become involved in efforts to develop those areas of enquiry that interest me. This includes the construction of formal networks but also more ‘covert’ activities by inserting contributions into conferences and sometimes publications where they may not have been initially welcomed. It was awkward and slightly dangerous work, especially early in my career, and I am not sure it always achieved what I intended.
Traumatic death rends the fabric of personal and social relations in a manner that is qualitatively different to other kinds of mortality. Mourners must deal with the personal affects, familial consequences and political aftermath of such events. This paper examines the way in which performances around such difficult deaths were used to express and negotiate trauma, through the lens of Iron Age burials in Britain and Ireland. It draws on performance theory developed in relation to contexts of violence to argue that such funerals embodied a necessary tension: articulating pain whilst working towards a re-making of the world. The paper makes an original contribution to the archaeological analysis and interpretation of funerary performance, and moves recent debates on violence in the Iron Age into a new arena of study.
Archaeology is one of the most ancient sciences in the history of human intellectual traditions. The roots have been traced in the prehistoric tells where the ancient people dug pits and in such way had developed the intellectual tradition of cultural memory. In early 21st century because of the multi-aspect terrorism all people have one and the same social status from perspectives of security – insecure social status. The scientists from all branches may help to change the situation by development a knowledge on terrorism which help to prevent it. Terrorism is like most dangerous social disease and needs a special attention, This article approaches archaeology of terrorism as an actual topic and develops a strategy in studying the terrorism from archaeological perspectives to have strong positive social impact on society.
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