A New approach to warfare

Summary

Lines of evidence, such as weapons, skeletal remains of victims of trauma, iconography, fortifications, etc., that are typically used to argue for the presence or absence of warfare in a society are often ambiguous. As a result researchers frequently reach contradicting conclusions from the same data. In situations where there are few material remains this problem is magnified making conclusions about warfare hard to come to. I put forward a new approach to the discussion of warfare that shifts the focus away from the presence or absence of armed combat and instead looks at the spatial distribution of the material remains in society, circumventing some of the problems with previous approaches. I utilize Practice theory, focusing on the idea of habitus, to look at the place of warfare in everyday life. While I am primarily concerned with the difficulties of identifying warfare through material remains and the application of Practice theory to the study of warfare I discuss these topics using Maiden Castle in Dorset England during the Iron Age as an example of how this approach can meaningfully implemented.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage