The Future of Research
Where do we go from here? Often in the field of archaeology particularly well-developed case studies can provide the type of in-depth analysis and interpretation that can lead to the proposal of new models and the posing of new questions.
These cases do not have to be definitive, but they can be useful if they lead to further testing and alternative model building. Keeley's argument for warfare between foragers and Linearbandkeramik (LBK) farmers in northern Europe at the beginning of the Neolithic is a good example.[83] Just laying out the case for warfare and the nature of the extant data can, in some areas, be a useful advance, an example being exploring the evidence for warfare in the early Greek Neolithic.[84] A number of recent edited volumes have taken this approach.[85] However, it appears that some of these papers do not provide enough data to convince researchers that these directions should be pursued, or they do not become mainstream examples read by students at large. This is a fertile field for which much evidence has not yet been pulled together.At the same time, there have been few studies that look at regional or temporal transects of warfare. While such research is hard to carry out, it will be vital in helping to fix warfare's role in human history. We need more well- controlled time sequences. If we want to determine the role of climate change or socio-political shifts in increases or decreases in warfare, we need to have long enough time sequences where we can estimate the level of warfare. This has been attempted for periods for which we have written records, and it has proved difficult enough.[86] It has been attempted for prehistoric areas in California and perhaps among the Maya, but for most areas of the world the prehistoric record has not been dealt with in a systematic enough way to allow for meaningful comparisons over long time spans.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we need to get beyond arguments around whether or not there was warfare. Once one defines a time frame that is long enough to allow meaningful statements (anything less than 100 to 200 years simply does not allow for very meaningful statements), and defines an area large enough to contain a society and its neighbours, the answer is, yes, there was warfare. Even the Egyptian kingdoms had warfare on their boundaries and fell into chaos with conflict between kingdoms. And Egypt was an exception for its level of peacefulness, just as Japan was for several centuries in the Tokugawa period. It is why warfare essentially ceased in such cases as these that is of interest. It is only by looking at a time frame long enough to see a change from warfare to peace (and too often, or almost always) back to warfare again, that we can move our understanding ahead. Simply to note that peace did prevail in a short time or space tells us nothing we do not know about the human condition.
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