The Archaeology of Violence: Interdisciplinary Approaches

Epilogue

Epilogue Keith F. Otterbein Ihave wondered why I have been asked to give some remarks. Maybe it is because I am old, maybe because I just published a book on war, titled The Anthropology of War. These remarks, and the following four paragraphs, were “Opening Remarks” for the conference. What follows these paragraphs is a partial survey of European archaeology over the past 60 years. Much thinking in European prehistory can be treated as five swinging pendulums. I doubt whether I was asked to give some remarks because I studied archaeology before any of the contributors did (I think). My first course in anthropology, Spring 1955, was Old World Archaeology. Two years later I attended archaeological field school, Summer 1957, at Point of Pines, Arizona. However, I eventually became a social and cultural anthropologist. I took up the study of warfare in 1961, and have been writing about warfare and related topics ever since. The topics include homicide, political assassination, feuding, dueling, capital punishment, human sacrifice, and genocide. However, my book How War Began (2004) deals with archaeological material from the earliest times and also focuses upon pristine or primary states. I argue for the existence of two paths to war. The first path arises out of early hunting/gathering violence, the second out of primary state formation. I was asked to provide “remarks highlighting the history of the study of violence and warfare at the University at Buffalo.” Although I have been at the University at Buffalo since 1966, I presume the request had nothing to do with the upheaval that took place here in the spring of 1970. It included tear gas and sit-ins. My remarks will focus upon the personnel of the Anthropology Department and their contributions to this subject. When I was hired in 1966, I had already published on Iroquois and Zulu warfare (1993:1–32) and had conducted a cross-cultural study of feuding, with my wife, Charlotte, a psychologist (1965). Raoul Naroll was soon hired and was the author of a study on deterrence in history (Naroll et al. 1974). Also hired 271 272 Epilogue was Fred Gearing, an expert on Cherokee warfare (e.g., Gearing 1962). And a few years after that Robert Dentan, the ethnographer of the Semai, joined the department. The Semai are famous for nonviolence, a topic that Bob has written about from 1968 to the present (e.g., 1979, 1992, 2004). Bob and I, in the last semester before we retired, taught combined senior seminars. Bob’s usual focus was on peace, mine on war. We brought our students to a large classroom. Although my students were outnumbered, they won. As you know, aggression and violence pays off. Now two new faculty members have replaced us. My replacement, Debra Reed-Danahy, focuses on refugees (e.g., Reed-Danahy and Brettell 2008) and Bob’s replacement, Vasiliki Neofotistos, focuses on the effects of war on populations and teaches a course on peace and war (e.g., Neofotistos 2004). Tina Thurston, who preceded the hiring of these women, has focused upon Early Medieval political systems in Denmark (such as 2001, 2007). Her results suggest that aggression can pay off in political autonomy. New faculty member Peter Biehl focuses on archaeological evidence for war. Since the 1960s my approach has been to examine warfare in different contexts and to attempt to explain war wherever it occurs. The frequency of wars has been of less concern to me. However, within both archaeology and cultural anthropology the question of frequency has assumed great importance. Believers in a low frequency have been ridiculed by some archaeologists for believing in the Myth of the Peaceful Savage. I have contended that these archaeologists have created another myth, The Myth of the Warlike Savage. In one case, the position is so extreme that, whether there is evidence for war or not, there have been constant battles for two million years (LeBlanc 2003). On the other hand, there is a cultural anthropologist who contends that if he cannot find evidence for war in a site report, that culture did not have war (Ferguson 2006). He does not realize that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” My belief is that “as archaeologists come to inherit the earth, I believe more evidence will be found” (Otterbein 2004:67). This volume on the subject suggests that this is happening. Recall from my remarks above that I began the study of European archaeology in 1955. However, I am not...