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.

About the Author
Mark W. Allen is Professor of Anthropology at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, USA. 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-edited The 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, USA. He has published over 60 scholarly articles in major research journals as well as monographs and edited volumes including Prehistoric California: Archaeology and the Myth of Paradise (with L. Mark Raab), California Prehistory: Colonization, Culture, and Complexity (with Kathryn Klar), and Contemporary Issues in California Archaeology (with Jennifer Perry). Jones is founding editor of the journal California Archaeology .

Reviews

*Outstanding Academic Title of 2015*

"In a formidable departure from the status quo, Allen and Jones are to be applauded for assembling these 2013 conference papers featuring cutting-edge scholarship by an impressive cadre of interdisciplinary scholars. The volume's significance cannot be overstated, particularly given that contemporary culture wars (centered on the pacification of the human past) have had an inordinate impact on the study of indigenous conflict and its consequences. The 19 chapters and 26 contributors in this veritable tour de force carry the day by way of their integration of state-of-the-art approaches for assessing ethnicity, sexual selection, carrying capacity, climate, demography, and the archaeological and forensic evidence required to effectively evaluate and/or validate evidence for the long chronology of warfare in hunter-gatherer populations. Summing Up: Essential. All academic levels/libraries."

-R. G. Mendoza, California State University, Monterey Bay, CHOICE Review

Book Information
ISBN 9781611329407
Author Mark W Allen
Format Paperback
Page Count 392
Imprint Left Coast Press Inc
Publisher Left Coast Press Inc
Weight(grams) 635g