Warrior Art, Osteological Evidence of Violence, and Colonial-Era Changes in Warfare and Male Status on the Western Great Plains

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Beyond “Barbarians”: Dimensions of Military Organization at the Bleeding Edge of the Premodern State" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Indigenous Plains warfare is one of the anthropological archetypes of tribal war, often seen as just as much of a status-related game as real violence directed toward larger social and political ends. This view misrepresents colonial-era warfare by focusing on only one aspect social violence on the Plains, but it also neglects major changes in the scale and organization of violence in the region that resulted from colonization. Rock art and direct evidence of weapons trauma provide complementary and sometimes contrasting evidence of organized violence, including evidence of multiple modes of conflict. Decades of research on Plains rock art especially document well-organized precolonial combat units that disappeared with colonial-era in-migration of new groups, the social changes that followed the introduction of the horse, and possible the effects of epidemic disease. These data underscore the different effects of variable modes of engagement with complex societies on local communities and the active involvement of those communities in processes of change.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Beyond “Barbarians”: Dimensions of Military Organization at the Bleeding Edge of the Premodern State   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36677.0