Social Substitutability (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Roscoe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An important theory for the origins of war defines it as lethal retaliatory action based on a structural principle of social substitutability, a principle that any member of the targeted group can be killed to avenge the actions of any one of its members. Prior to the Holocene, according to the theory, this principle (and hence war) did not exist. Lethal...