Bibliographic Essay

Notions of a peaceful, egalitarian Neolithic were prevalent in the processual views of the 1960s and 1970s, but by the close of the century accepted paradigms were beginning to shift.

1999) and also J. Guilaine and J. Zammit's Le Sentier de la guerre (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2001), the latter focusing largely on France, with an English translation in 2008. Raymond Kelly's Warless Societies and the Origin of War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,

2000) had important theoretical ramifications, particularly in summarising the now oft quoted ‘Theory of Social Substitution', characterising the internal logic of group conflict and offering an alternative to simply studying violence on a behavioural level.

Much of the evidence for Neolithic violence emerged piecemeal over successive decades as individual cases of skeletal injuries arose. These are too numerous to usefully list here, although key examples include Christopher Knusel, ‘The Arrowhead Injury to Individual B2', in Don Benson and Alasdair Whittle (eds.), Building Memories: The Neolithic Long Barrow at Ascott-under-Wychwood (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2006), pp. 218-220; and the section on violence in Martin Smith and Megan Brickley's People of the Long Barrows (Stroud: History Press, 2009), pp. 102-112. John Robb's study ‘Violence and Gender in Early Italy', in Debra L.

The possibility of misidentification and the need for reliable Middle Range Theory also prompted several experimental studies. M. J. Smith, M. B. Brickley and S. L. Leach tested the effects of Neolithic period arrows on animal bone: ‘Experimental Evidence for Lithic Projectile Injuries: Improving Identification of an Under-recognised Phenomenon', Journal of Archaeological Science 34 (2007), 540-53; and Meghan Dyer and Linda Fibiger tested blunt weapons of Neolithic date, using plastic spheres designed to act as synthetic ‘skulls' for forensic tests, in ‘Understanding Blunt Force Trauma in Neolithic Europe: The First Experiments using a Skin-Skull-Brain Model and the Thames Beater', Antiquity 91.360 (2017), 1515-28.

Further insights have been provided by publications presenting evidence for attacks on enclosures and settlements, including apparent massacres of significant numbers of people, the first and best known of which is Joachim Wahl and Hans Konig's ‘Anthropologisch-traumatologische untersuchung der menschlichen skeletresste aus dem bandkeramischen massengrab bei Talheim, Kreiss Heilbronn', Fundberichte aus Baden-Württemburg 12 (1987), 65-193, with the most recent case being Christian Meyer et al., ‘The Massacre Mass Grave of Schoneck-Kilianstädten Reveals New Insights into Collective Violence in Early Neolithic Central Europe', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112.36 (2015), 11217-22.

The most comprehensive text to address the issue of hostilities in Neolithic Europe at a continent-wide level is Rick Schulting and Linda Fibiger (eds.), Sticks, Stones and Broken Bones: Neolithic Violence in a European Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

The recent publications cited above have appeared against a background of more general works on the bioarchaeology of violence. For key examples see the following: Phillip Walker, ‘A Bioarchaeological Perspective on the History of Violence', Annual Review of Anthropology 30 (2001), 573-96; Frayer and Martin (eds.) Troubled Times; T. Otto, H. Thrane and H. Vandkilde (eds.), Warfare and Society: Archaeological and Social Anthropological Perspectives (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2006); D. L. Martin and C. P. Anderson (eds.), Bioarchaeological and Forensic Perspectives on Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); and Rebecca Redfern, Injury and Trauma in Bioarchaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). For an up-to-date overview of ethnographic and ethnohistorical approaches to pre-state violence, see Mark W. Allen and Terry L. Jones (eds.), Violence and Warfare among Hunter-Gatherers (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2014). Lastly a work presenting the bioarchaeology of violence to a non-specialist readership was provided by Martin Smith's Mortal Wounds: The Human Skeleton as Evidence for Conflict in the Past (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2017). This work includes a chapter on the Neolithic considering the extent to which this period indicates a new trajectory for human hostilities that differs from what went before.