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.

Mark W. Allen is Professor of Anthropology at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona. He has been studying the anthropology of warfare since 1988 when he began dissertation research on the prehistory of the New Zealand Maori. He has also studied prehistoric violence among hunter-gatherers in the Great Basin, California, the American Southwest, and Australia. He co-editedThe Archaeology of Warfare: Prehistories of Raiding and Conquest and has also recently published a synthesis of prehistoric warfare and violence in California.

Terry L. Jones is Professor of Anthropology at California State Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo. He has published over 60 scholarly articles in major research journals as well as monographs and edited volumes includingPrehistoric California: Archaeology and the Myth of Paradise (with L. Mark Raab),California Prehistory: Colonization, Culture, and Complexity (with Kathryn Klar), andContemporary Issues in California Archaeology (with Jennifer Perry). Jones is founding editor of the journal California Archaeology.