Finding Violence in the Deep Past

The further one goes back in time, the more difficult it becomes to make these distinctions between intra-group violence and warfare. On the one hand, the only evidence one recovers for intra-group violence is evidence of wounds, so it must be grossly underestimated.

Warfare among complex societies generates evidence such as shields, armour and site locations. Members of less complex societies are not very likely to bring bodies killed in warfare away from the community back to the community for burial. Shields and armour would have been made from perishable materials in such societies. Thus, our ability to recognise violence in the past diminishes as societies become less complex. This is even more the case for warfare deaths than it is for intra-societal violence. The famous Otzi Tyrolean Iceman mummy was killed almost certainly in warfare, was not buried, and was preserved only by extreme circumstances. Little of his weaponry would have been preserved in a typical archaeological context. Similarly, the famous Kennewick Man of North America, who had a spear-point in him, was also not buried within a community and most likely was not formally buried at all. In contrast, an individual who suffered various non-lethal wounds inflicted either as the result of warfare or intra-societal violence but who died from another cause and was buried in the community would be likely found by archaeologists.

The unavoidable errors associated with being unable to recognise all warfare deaths in skeletal remains and studying only skeletal remains of individuals who were buried compound to result in an underestimation of warfare. This underestimation is further compounded as we go back in time, as skeletons are less complete and a smaller number of people had formal burials. Thus, as we go back in time, the evidence for violence suggests it was less lethal and less likely the result of warfare.

A similar problem exists with ambiguous skeletal evidence of violence in female remains. There is evidence of intra-community violence among women who held low social status.^{^[81]} There is also other evidence of violent deaths among women that seem to be from warfare, for example in California.^{^[82]} In these cases, the incidence always seems to be lower than that for men, which is not surprising given that most inter-community warfare is between men, and women are often captured and not killed in warfare. In fact, one of the goals in some warfare is to capture women for wives. However, some women are killed in warfare, and so again the presence of skeletal evidence of violence does not necessarily demonstrate unequivocally either the existence of warfare or intra-societal violence.

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Source: Fagan Garrett G., Fibiger Linda, Hudson Mark, Trundle Matthew (eds.). The Cambridge World History of Violence. Volume 1: The Prehistoric and Ancient Worlds. Cambridge University Press,2020. — 756 p.. 2020

Finding Violence in the Deep Past

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