Buffer Zones and Ecological Models of War: Theoretical and Archaeological Considerations

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Theorizing Warfare: Global Perspectives on Defense and Fortification" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Buffer zones, areas unoccupied due to conflict or threat of conflict, have been abundantly documented historically and ethnographically and recognized archaeologically in some regions. In the context of ecological models of warfare, their existence was taken by some to suggest that population and resource pressure did not contribute to conflict owing to the ability to cede valuable land. Alternatively, buffer zones have been viewed as a mechanism to address population-resource imbalances through the rejuvenation of resources in these areas. We examine the relationship between population density and buffer zone size using historical and ethnographic cases, and find a strong negative statistical relationship. Buffer zone width is severely constrained by population density, suggesting that the ability to cede land is constrained by resource requirements. Consequently, the existence of buffer zones may still indicate that resource stress contributes to conflict, and the opening of buffer zones may actually accentuate resource stress in some cases. We examine select archaeological case studies from the Americas and Europe to demonstrate the potentials and challenges of identifying buffer zones in ancient cases, as well as what their existence and size may suggest about the drivers and dynamics of ancient conflict.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Theorizing Warfare: Global Perspectives on Defense and Fortification

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52530