Violence and warfare among hunter-gatherers

How did warfare originate? Was it human genetics? Social competition? The rise of complexity? Intensive study of the long-term hunter-gatherer past brings us closer to an answer. The original chapters in this volume examine cultural areas on five continents where there is archaeological, ethnographic, and historical evidence for hunter-gatherer conflict despite high degrees of mobility, small populations, and relatively egalitarian social structures. Their controversial conclusions will elicit interest among anthropologists, archaeologists, and those in conflict studies.

List of Illustrations; Preface; Part I: A Neglected Anthropology: Hunter-Gatherer Violence and Warfare; 1. Hunter-Gatherer Conflict: The Last Bastion of the Pacified Past? // Mark W. Allen; 2. Forager Warfare and Our Evolutionary Past // Steven A. LeBlanc; Part II: Violence and Warfare among Mobile Foragers; 3. Violence and Warfare in the European Mesolithic and Paleolithic // Virginia Hutton Estabrook; 4. Wild-Type Colonizers and High Levels of Violence among Paleoamericans // James C. Chatters; 5. Hunter-Gatherer Violence and Warfare in Australia // Mark W. Allen.

6. Conflict and Territoriality in Aboriginal Australia: Evidence from Biology and Ethnography // Colin Pardoe7. Conflict and Interpersonal Violence in Holocene Hunter-Gatherer Populations from Southern South America // Florencia Gordón; 8. Warfare and Expansion: An Ethnohistoric Perspective on the Numic Spread // Mark Q. Sutton; 9. Wait and Parry: Archaeological Evidence for Hunter-Gatherer Defensive Behavior in the Interior Northwest // Kenneth C. Reid; 10. Scales of Violence across the North American Arctic // John Darwent and Christyann M. Darwent.

11. The Spectre of Conflict on Isla Cedros, Baja California, Mexic…