Introduction

The subject of social violence and warfare is of profound interest to researchers across the social sciences as forms of human behavior and social interaction, violence and warfare have been a part of humanity throughout recorded history. Much of the earliest written records from all over the world indicate the presence of violence. The history of many civilizations plainly shows how warfare has influenced the political, social, and economic dynamics of the modern world. The ethnographic record also demonstrates the significance of social violence for many societies. To understand the diachronic patterns, conditions, and causes related to forms of social violence, research must move beyond more recent manifestations and incorporate data from the distant past. Past forms of social violence and warfare can help inform discussions of our present and future conditions of conflict, even if we are only to consider the past 40 000 to 45 000 years of Homo sapiens history.

Some researchers assert that only centralized, state-level units cause and engage in warfare, or that warfare is a relatively modern phenomenon. However, increasing amounts archaeologically accumulated data suggest that warfare was a part of humanity within the deeper recesses of our past, in times and places where humans did not live in social units analogous to the states and empires of the modern and ancient world. There is growing evidence that warfare has played an instrumental role in shaping social and cultural development for many smaller-scale, and relatively less complex, non-state societies in various areas of the world. Beyond detecting proximate and long-term causes of warfare, archaeology can help us to determine how warfare contributed to sociopolitical changes in human societies. Material markers for identifying warfare allow researchers to estimate the scale, intensity, and frequency of the behavior, that is, of warfare’s social importance.