Conflict and Inequality
A central question raised by Neolithic violence is whether anything ‘new' is in evidence or whether such behaviours simply become more visible from this time onwards. As noted above, in terms of the types of implements available for use as weapons and the specific nature of violent acts at the level of individuals, the Neolithic did not differ substantively from the times that preceded it.
There are no obvious differences between the types of violent injury that have been identified on Neolithic remains and those recognised in Mesolithic skeletons.[169] There are also various examples of lethal violence between groups that predate the advent of domestication and presumably of sedentism by several millennia, though the latter point is open to further research. We have no reason to assume that the mindset of the participants in such actions was any different from later periods (regarding any member of an opposing group as representative of the whole and therefore a legitimate target). Nor are forager groups necessarily any less territorial than more settled communities; in fact, the former havecommonly been observed to be highly sensitive to trespass.[170] In this respect it can reasonably be argued that the behaviour exhibited by groups of Mesolithic people raiding and feuding may have not have differed significantly from their Neolithic successors. What had changed, however, is the scale at which such hostilities were conducted. The various aforementioned enclosures with signs of massed assaults followed in several cases by massacres constitute the earliest evidence from Europe and possibly the world, of large, coordinated groups of individuals acting collectively to attack similar sized groups within substantive fortified structures. The significant undertaking involved in constructing such defences elsewhere, especially where additional defensive features such as palisades were subsequently added, it has been argued, indicate a perception of predictable external threat, at least in the immediate and mid-term future on the part of the builders.
This latter point might suggest that the frequency of violent interactions had increased along with the numbers of potential participants.The implied increase in the scale, frequency and degree of organisation involved in warfare then raises further questions: first, regarding what had changed to make these developments possible in practical terms; and second, regarding the nature of the underlying social drivers that caused such new patterns of hostility to manifest themselves at this time. As has been noted, there is often little convergence between proximate and ultimate causes for conflict between groups, and the overall consistency with which warfare appears to have intensified following the shift to domesticated resources (even taking regional variation into account) would suggest that much of the answer likely lies in the economic base on which these new societies relied. Subsistence by foraging tends to keep group sizes small, with limited potential for material inequalities to emerge between individuals, while marriages among hunter-gatherers tend to be monogamous with relatively low levels of polygamy. This latter observation, based on a sample of 190 recently observed forager groups, is suggested to have also held true in the past on the basis of phylogenetic analysis of hunter-gatherer populations.[171] Should conflict arise in such a society consisting of scattered bands of mobile foragers, the opportunities to call upon the support of others to join one's cause would be relatively limited, as would the potential rewards for joining such a fight. Consequently, while there is certainly evidence for hostility between groups during the Mesolithic, with the potential for brutal massacres of one band by another, as at Ofnet, we have no reason to think that such actions ever exceeded the scale of perhaps a few dozen participants on either side.
The switch to reliance on domesticated plants and animals also prompted a range of social developments with implications that went far beyond a change in diet.
In considering the wider basis of human sexual relationships, Matt Ridley noted that this shift brought new opportunities for personal advancement of a kind that had not previously existed.[172] Unlike previous lifeways, farming and herding offer considerable rewards for those with the greatest aptitude. The skilful herder who breeds more cattle and the most adept farmer who grows more crops are in a position to generate substantial surpluses. This latter development would place such individuals in the previously unknown position of being able to buy the labour of others less successful than themselves. In this respect not only did the Neolithic see the appearance of substantive economic inequalities, but also the first manifestations of the now familiar axiom, ‘wealth generates more wealth'. Furthermore, the new economy also had far-reaching implications for family life. Whereas group sizes had previously been largely limited by the carrying capacity of the wild resources available in local environments and the difficulties of maintaining mobility with multiple small children, a life based on domesticates both facilitated and rewarded larger families. This change led to a population explosion popularly termed the Neolithic Demographic Transition,[173] after which a return to foraging was no longer feasible. But what may have been an even more far-reaching change to familial relations was that the most successful and ‘wealthy' individuals were now in a position to support more than one spouse.Studies of recent pastoralists repeatedly concur in noting that in such societies marriages are exogamous and patrilocal and also polygynous, with the most powerful and successful men having the greatest number of wives.[174] Given that the ratio of men to women will normally be roughly equal, in a society practising polygyny some men will never be able to marry. Such disparity is further heightened within a generation or two when polygynous men generate large numbers of descendants, with wealth (in the form of cattle) owned and inherited down the male line further reinforcing and increasing inequality over time.
Customs like these could lead to the emergence of very powerful patriarchs who were in a position to command the allegiance of many more individuals through family ties than they could ever have done as a member of a small-scale band of foragers. These new social networks would also have created larger groups of related individuals who by being less mobile also became more territorial regarding the smaller area over which they now ranged. Rather than the stable, egalitarian society imagined by many not so long ago, the Neolithic might in fact be more accurately characterised as an unequal and inherently unstable society, which may explain the signs of violence apparent in human remains from this period. There was now more to fight over in terms of livestock and harvested crops to steal, and grazing and cleared arable land to move into, but a further target of raiding may have been other people. In a situation where wealth and the opportunity to marry were now unevenly distributed, those with the most to gain would also have the least to lose. Such inequalities may therefore explain the unusual demographic compositions among the skeletal assemblages at Asparn-Schletz, Schoneck-Kilianstädten, Halberstadt and Wayland’s Smithy.