Warfare and the Origins of Political Control
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Warfare and the Origins of Political Control " at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
The relationship between warfare and the development of institutions of political control has been a fundamental issue in the humanities and social sciences since the inception of the disciplines. Since Confucius, Sun Tzu, and Plato, scholars have pondered how societies make wars and how wars make states. Over the last 75 years, historians, ethnographers, political scientists, sociologists, archaeologists, and bioarchaeologists have developed detailed histories of warfare and sociopolitical change in a wide range of time periods in nearly every region around the globe. The time is now ripe to develop a global understanding of sociopolitical change and human violence. This session will explore from diverse perspectives on the role that prehistoric and historic armed conflict played in the establishment, maintenance, and demise of political institutions in transegalitarian, status-based societies, and premodern states. We examine the material and nonmaterial causes of warfare, the organization of combatants, conflict and ideological signaling, and how leaders and followers created institutions of control in the context of escalating violence. To expand the multidisciplinary breadth, global scope, and theoretical depth of these issues, the session gathers together archaeologists, sociocultural anthropologists, and ethnohistorians working in Europe, Middle East, Asia, Oceania, and North, Central, and South America.
Other Keywords
Warfare •
Violence •
and Conflict •
Survey •
Ethnohistory/History •
Power Relations and Inequality •
Mississippian •
Bronze Age •
Andes: Formative •
Historical Archaeology
Geographic Keywords
Republic of Panama (Country) •
Republic of Colombia (Country) •
Netherlands Antilles (Country) •
Aruba (Country) •
Republic of Ecuador (Country) •
South America (Continent) •
Republic of Peru (Country) •
North America (Continent) •
Republic of Chile (Country) •
Asia (Continent)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-13 of 13)
- Documents (13)
- All in One Boat: How to Keep a Raiding Party Together in Bronze Age Southern Scandinavia (2023)
- Conflict and the Politics of Solidarity: Hierarchy and its Limits in the Late Precolumbian Andean Highlands (2023)
- Conveying Inka Ideology of Warfare for Establishing and Maintaining Political Control (2023)
- Early Mesopotamian Urbanism and Social Stress: Violent Conflict at Fourth Millennium BCE Tell Brak, NE Syria (2023)
- From City Walls to Country Forts: Changing Landscape Intentions of Social Complexity from the Early Historic to Medieval Eras in the Indian Subcontinent (2023)
- Ideological and Material Conditions Shaping the Nature of Warfare in Maya Society (2023)
- Mississippian Warfare and Social Houses (2023)
- War and Peace and the Origins of Political Control in the Central Andean Coast: 3000 BC–AD 600 (2023)
- War, Power, and History in the Mississippian Period Central Illinois Valley (2023)
- Warfare and the Origins of Social Complexity in Southern Central America (2023)
- Warfare and the Polity in Early China (2023)
- Warfare and the Rise of Sociopolitical Complexity in Southeast Asia (2023)
- Warfare, Captive-Taking, Enslavement, and the Creation of Power (2023)