Archaeological human skeletal remains provide one of the most direct and informative sources of evidence on the human life experience in the past. The skeletal remains from the northwestern Iranian site of Hasanlu are of particular interest because of the paucity of remains from…
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The general importance of naval warfare in the Bronze Age has never been considered in detail. Its importance cannot be overstressed and such developments should be seen as part of a technological "koine" between the Near Eastern and Mediterranean cultures, as there is evidence …
This dissertation is about why big states lose small wars. Contrary to prior analyses of asymmetric conflict which hold that actors' relative power best explains outcomes, I argue that relative strategy matters more than relative power. I make my case by focusing on asymmetric c…
In this dissertation, I study a critical transition in the urban development of Tell es-Sweyhat, a large site in Syria occupied from c. 3000-1900 BCE. In the middle of the third millennium, Sweyhat was an open town centered on a fortress. It was ringed with cemeteries and had a …
Archaic and classical Greek infantries fought in a close-order tactical formation known as the hoplite phalanx. As an instrument of military power, the phalanx provided the poleis (city-states) of the classical period (479-323 BCE) with forces that would prove all but invincible…
This dissertation investigates drone warfare, which is the military's use of unmanned planes to strike enemy targets, an integral and relatively new strategy in the 'war on terror'. The dissertation is composed of three unique research papers. The first gets to grips with how th…
New technologies accompany each war. The submarine dove during The Civil War, tanks rolled through World War I, the atom bomb was dropped in World War II and Agent Orange was diffused in Vietnam. Media often refer to today's conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan as "Obama's Dron…
In 1975, the Vietminh (term used to denote North Vietnamese who held Communist sympathies) won their crusade to unite North Vietnam with the South. It was as much a Civil War as a war of resistance against foreign invasion. In order to understand how the Communist Vietminh won, …
Whenever military operations are non-linear, dispersed, and decentralized, swarming can be an effective tactic. Today insurgents are employing swarming as a form of asymmetric warfare against superior conventional armies from the mountains of Afghanistan to the cities of Iraq. I…
This study is a historical comparison of the use of gendered metaphors in the recording of the Israelite/Assyrian encounter (9th –7th centuries BCE). Beginning with the assumption that gendered language is a tool of ideology expressed metaphorically, the study examines the manip…
While there have been a large number of studies of ancient armies and fleets, there has been little scholarship on joint operations between land and naval forces in the ancient world, otherwise known as amphibious operations. This dissertation examines the initial development of…
This thesis focuses on the connections between warfare, slavery and their impacts on Eastern Yorubaland during the nineteenth century. To the extent that slavery became an integral part of the society, the connections resulted in fundamental changes in political, economic, demog…
After an introductory chapter, in which the studies of previous scholars are examined, warfare in the Latin East in the period is placed in its historical context. It involved not only crusades: there were long periods of truce when warfare was restricted to raiding expeditions,…
This dissertation explores the phenomenon of "apparitions" in the post-war context of ex-Yugoslavia. On the one hand, it interprets the experience of seeing visions, and on the other it contextualizes these sightings into a political climate in the aftermath of the war in the 19…
This study traces the enlistment of concepts and metaphors from nonlinear science (e.g. chaos and complexity theories) by the U.S. military in its attempts to cope with the perceived demands of new information and communication technologies (ICTs), as well as an emerging post-in…
This dissertation is a social and military history of the army in Egypt under the Ptolemies (323–30 BC), the Greek rulers who succeeded Alexander the Great in Egypt. Building on approaches developed in state-formation theory, notably Mann's concept of social power (1986) that th…
This dissertation bears witness to a process of bearing witness to the war on Iraq, which began on March 20, 2003 at 5:00 a.m. Baghdad time. As an active participant and observer of the making of the World Tribunal on Iraq, of which the Istanbul session was the culmination of tw…
Horses and chariots play a dynamic role in the military and economic life of Israel during the Iron Age (1150-586 B.C.E.). Although the Assyrians, Egyptians, Arameans, and Israelites all fielded substantial chariot contingents and engaged in numerous battles, the practicalities …
The 711 Muslim invasion of Visigothic Iberia was spearheaded by an asymmetric martial paradigm known as al-ghazu , which originated in pre-Islamic Arabia. The assimilation of the ghazu and its subsequent dominance of the Iberian military culture shaped the martial ecumene of gen…
Shooting Up: A Short History of Drugs and War examines how intoxicants have been put to the service of states, empires and their armies throughout history. Since the beginning of organized combat, armed forces have prescribed drugs to their members for two general purposes: to e…