What Does Archaeology Have to Contribute to the Study of Violence?

Archaeology in its various forms provides the bulk of the information avail­able about the deep past with respect to violence in general and warfare in particular. In this conversation, I lump archaeological data together with ancient historical, that is written data, and include settlement pattern data, osteology and relevant past climate data.

So, the question is, are these data good enough to serve as the basis for saying meaningful things about warfare and/or violence in the past? The question may be better phrased like this: how good are archaeological data for determining the presence, absence and degree of warfare in the deep past? Evidence for peace is probably harder to find than evidence for warfare. In any case, as is well known, the further one goes back in the past, the thinner the archaeological record, because both fewer remains survive and there were fewer people to leave remains. Moreover, less complex societies leave less complex remains. We would not expect fortifications for Upper Palaeolithic foragers, much less from pre-anatomically modern humans.

Despite the limitations, we have human remains themselves that can and do have wounds of various types. As George Milner has demonstrated, of arrow wounds inflicted in the historic period, only one case in three results in evidence that a bioarchaeologist can identify on a skeleton.^[60] We are on the cusp of being able to recover ancient DNA evidence of bacterial infections, and so we may soon find another line of evidence for battle wounds.

Not only do we have the potential to recover such information; in reality it is often recovered. It is probably safe to argue that for any period or locality for which we have a reasonable data set, there is at least some evidence that can be interpreted as related to violence or warfare. The archaeological record is far from empty in this regard; it just needs careful evaluation.