2 Approaches To Understanding and Interpreting Violence in The Pas Injury

2 Approaches to Understanding and
Interpreting Violence in the Past
This chapter introduces the language and meanings of the words we use to describe
violence in the archaeological record, emphasising the need to be both accurate
and contextual. It provides an overview of the ‘Web of Violence’ model and
‘Ecological model of Violence’, two approaches which have come to the fore in the
wider-literature and are proposed to be amongst the most relevant to bioarchaeol-
ogy. It provides an overview of the ways in which the archaeological evidence (and
absence) for violence in the past has been discussed in the social science literature.
2.1 Terms, Meanings and Models
The language we use to describe and categorise acts of violence directly influences
how these are understood, discussed and shared between individuals and commu-
nities over time and space (Arendt, 2008, Betz, 1977, Denham, 2008, Rutherford
et al., 2007). There are no universal meanings or definitions, and at the individual
level, understandings can change across the life course in response to the events and
circumstances we encounter; additionally, its meaning varies considerably between
languages, emphasising its relationship with the cultural context (Bäck, 2004,
Bowman, 2001, 42). The close association between the meaning of violence and
culture has been explored by Blok (2000, 24, 33) who notes that it is not a ‘natural’
or unchanging fact, but is a shifting form of interaction and communication. This
is most evident in the classification and punishment of crimes (Blok, 2000, 27) and
in recent times, the establishment of ‘Trauma site’ museums (Bastarrachea, 2008,
Violi, 2012) and cemeteries after the two World Wars (Mant and Lovell, 2012).
However, Coady (1986) reminds us that there is often a large disparity between
normal and everyday understandings of violence and those used and discussed by
academics in the social and clinical sciences, with everyday understanding of vio-
lence being synonymous with inter-personal violence. Violence has been described
by Engle Merry (2009, 4) as a ‘deceivingly simple concept’, because it depends on
the social position of the observer and context of the event. Since the 1970s, mean-
ings have changed from, blows and physical injury, to a wide variety of concepts
such as: assaults on self-esteem, personal possessions, and emotional and finan-
cial well-being (Engle Merry, 2009, 5, 181). Riches (1991, 286) has discussed this
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4 Understanding and Interpreting Violence in the Past
highly complex problem and proposes that violence should only refer to matters
of ‘contested physical hurt’ but as discussed by Engle Merry (2009), this is not a
binding or universally accepted definition (Strathern and Stewart, 1999, 89–90).
Numerous theoretical models exist to explain and understand violence, these have
been reviewed by Turpin and Kurtz (1997a) who raise a number of problems: disci-
plines have compartmentalised meanings, an approach which limits creativity and
more nuanced understandings (see Reiss and Roth, 1993); the majority of scholars
focus on one level of violence – psychologists and biologists look at the individual,
while sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists examine collective and
interstate violence; social science methodologies focus on a specific form of vio-
lence that is limited in spatial/temporal terms; and there is a lack of diversity, with
research by women, non-westerners and people of colour marginalised. Beginning
with violence, the term comes from the Latin ‘violentus’ and is defined as: ‘exertion
of physical force so as to injure or abuse in … an instance of violent treatment …
intense or turbulent action or force’ (The Penguin Dictionary, 2004, 1573), the term
also means to violate, but the relationship between these two terms is not simple,
because it is not clear what is being violated when an act of violence takes place –
additionally, violation can occur without violence and vice versa (Bufacchi, 2004,
2005). The World Health Organization definition may be the most useful for bio-
archaeological research, ‘the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened
or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that
either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychologi-
cal harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation’ (World Health Organization, 2002a, 5).
This definition excludes unintentional accidents and their subsequent injuries, and
instead focuses on intention – intent to use force or an intention to commit an
act that may cause injury or disability. Importantly, although the World Health
Organization recognises the relationship between culture and violence, it observes
that violent acts may not be universally recognised or defined as such by different
communities; consequently, they concentrate on acts of violence (public or private)
that result in health implications (World Health Organization, 2002a, 5).
Within the social sciences, violence is regarded as having ‘several natures’ and
is an important ‘ingredient’ in reality (Aijmer, 2000, 1). For the most part, vio-
lence can be understood as either creating or destroying order, and establishing
legitimacy for successful individuals (Bowman, 2001, Stewart and Strathern, 2002,
2, Strathern and Stewart, 1999, van der Dennen, 1980). Other terms frequently
employed in the bioarchaeological literature include, trauma and injury. Like vio-
lence, how these terms are defined and understood is dependent on the field of
study – medicine, psychology and the social sciences. Trauma injuries from the
United Kingdom have been described as a ‘matter of changing social constructions
of experience, in the context of particular clinical, cultural, and political ideolo-
gies’ (Kirmayer et al., 2008, 4). The word trauma has its origins in the Greek word
for wound (tpãuμa), and in the medical literature it became associated with physi-
cal wounds from the mid-1600s and by the 1800s it was employed to describe the
psychological consequences of living in an industrialised environment and from
Terms, Meanings and Models 5
that time on, developed its own meanings in the psychological literature (Kirmayer
et al., 2008, 5). In contemporary clinical literature it is defined as: ‘a physical wound
or injury, such as a fracture or blow’ (Oxford Concise Medical Dictionary, 2000,
670). This definition includes the term injury. Observations about physical injury,
and their associated sources of data, taken from Johnson (2006, 2008) and Johnson
and Leone (2005), show that it has a Latin origin – injuria – a word which can be
used to describe damage, hurt or an injustice, or a wrong (The Penguin Dictionary,
2004, 722). The International Classification of Disease published by the World
Health Organization classifies injuries as intentional and unintentional and defines
injury as being ‘caused by acute exposure to physical agents such as mechanical
energy, heat, electricity, chemicals, and ionizing radiation in amounts that exceed
the threshold of physiological tolerance. In some cases (for example, drowning and
frostbite), injuries result from the sudden lack of essential agents such as oxygen or
heat’ (Peden et al., 2002).
In bioarchaeology, the majority of human remains curated for study lack soft tis-
sue and this fact has shaped our conception of trauma and injury, although there is
little consistency between scholars in the range and variety of lesions that are con-
sidered to have a traumatic or violent origin. Ortner (2003, 120) stated four ways
in which trauma could affect the skeleton: a partial or incomplete break in a bone;
abnormal displacement or dislocation; disruption in nerve and/or blood supply,
and artificially induced abnormal shape or contour of bone. Ortner (2003, 177) also
observed that, ‘the variants of trauma … affect the skeleton in so many ways that a
comprehensive review would fill the pages of a substantial book’. In contrast, and
fulfilling the purpose of their encyclopaedia, Aufderheide and Rodríguez-Martín
(1998, 19–50) provide a definition of each type of trauma. Lovell’s (1997, 139)
review provides an un-referenced definition: ‘trauma may be defined many ways but
conventionally is understood to refer to an injury to living tissue that is caused by
a force or mechanism extrinsic to the body‘. Roberts (1991, 2006) has consistently
provided a definition which reflects her clinical training, ‘trauma can be defined as
any bodily injury or wound’ (Roberts and Manchester, 2005, 84), and follows the
four subdivisions published by Ortner and Putschar (1981, 55). Roberts’ definition
has been reproduced by subsequent publications e.g. Jurmain (2005, 185).
In recent years, clinicians and social scientists have promoted the connections
between environment, society, culture and trauma through the creation of models
of violence. One of the best known is the World Health Organization’s (2002a,
12–3) ecological model of violence, which developed from a model applied to child
abuse and later, youth violence, domestic violence and the abuse of elderly peo-
ple. The model consists of four overlapping oval layers – individual, relationship,
community and societal – representing the inter-connectivity of violence, as the
World Health Organization (2002a, 12) recognises that ‘violence is the result of
the complex interplay of individual, relationship, social, cultural and environmen-
tal factors’. The first stage, individual, examines the biological and personal his-
tory reasons that affect a person’s behaviour; the relationship stage looks at close
personal relationships – those between peers, partners and family; the community
stage identifies the social environment in which the relationship stage exists, such
as schools, population density and levels of crime or unemployment in a person’s
community; finally, the societal stage studies the factors which determine rates of
violence such as: cultural norms which allow violence to be the ‘right’ way of solv-
ing conflicts, norms that support male dominance over women and children, and
those which support political conflict and the use of excessive force by the police
against citizens (World Health Organization, 2002a, 13). It is evident that this
model recognises the powerful role of structural violence at all levels of the model.
In the social sciences, a concept of understanding violence that has gained in
popularity is ‘the web of violence’ framework (Turpin and Kurtz, 1997b). By con-
ceptualising violence as a web, the inter-connectivity of violence between individu-
als, groups, communities and nations is made clear (Turpin and Kurtz, 1997b); ‘the
causes of violence, from inter-personal to global, are connected, as are the conse-
quences’ (Turpin and Kurtz, 1997a, 12). Being mindful that violence does not occur
in isolation, allows the researcher to see how violence sustained during childhood
may lead that person to be both a victim and/or a perpetrator of inter-personal vio-
lence in adulthood (Hamby and Grych, 2013), a pattern often observed in studies
of child abuse (Herrenkohl et al., 2003). The proponents of the model, Turpin and
Kurtz (1997b) and Hamby and Grych (2013), emphasise the relationship between
the micro and macro scales of violence (i.e. domestic violence and warfare) and
believe that conflict is endemic to social life – they also recognise the part struc-
tural violence plays in violence. The links between micro and macro levels of vio-
lence were first identified by gender scholars, because they were able to show that
patriarchal cultures and sexist ideologies create micro-level violence against women
and children and also propagate macro-level violence, such as warfare (Turpin and
Kurtz, 1997a, 9–10). The web of violence and ecological model of violence are use-
ful approaches to understanding archaeological evidence because they emphasise
the connections between age, gender, environment, social and economic statuses
and health, relationships inherent within a bioarchaeological approach (Buikstra
and Beck, 2006, Buzon et al., 2005).
Using the World Health Organization (2002a) ecological model of violence, the
societal scale includes warfare, a form of collective violence (de la Roche, 2001).
This scale of violence takes place between groups and nations and appears to be
caused by: unequal access to power, social inequalities, control of resources by a
single powerful group and rapid demographic changes that cannot be coped with
by government (Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, 1998, World
Health Organization, 2002a). As with the term violence, defining the term war is
very difficult, as it depends on the context and the background of the organisation
or person creating the definition. One dictionary definition is: ‘a state or period of
open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations … a struggle
between opposing forces or for a particular end’ (The Penguin Dictionary, 2004,
1588) and differs from conflict, which ‘involves disputing over issues and interests
that may lead to violence or the use of force whose legitimacy may be contested’
(Strathern and Stewart, 1999, 89). People’s perception of what war and warfare is
Terms, Meanings and Models 7
has changed over time, in tune with changes in prevailing philosophical traditions,
to the extent that today in the western world, it is understood as a ‘moral’ activity
and should not be mistaken for evidence of violence (Warburton, 2006, 38, 52). The
majority of literature agrees that it is a state activity rather than conflict between
tribes or small groups (amongst others, Ember and Ember, 1994, Thorpe, 2005,
Thrane, 2006, Otterbein, 2004). Early states are considered to have been created
when there was population growth, an ideology that legitimises leadership, domina-
tion of the economy, increasingly complex socio-political organisation, and limited
military apparatus (Claessen, 2006, 224–5). Many of these ideas originate from
Carneiro’s (1970) ‘Circumspection theory’ which Claessen’s (2010) work has heavily
criticised. He has been able to show that contemporary examples and anthropologi-
cal research demonstrate that population pressure and violence do not necessarily
create a state, instead he suggests that the origins of a state are encouraged by
war but they usually arise from multiple factors, such as demographic, economic,
ideological causes and politico-strategic causes (Claessen, 2006). Additionally,
Warburton (2006) has noted a trend in the warfare literature that affects interpre-
tation, whereby prehistoric warfare is considered quite differently and emphasises
victims and victors, weapons, battles and fortifications; whereas, historic warfare
focuses on trade, politics and diplomacy.
The application of the term warfare to organised tribal violence is dependent on
the definition employed, although many anthropologists and archaeologists believe
that warfare only applies to conflicts between states (e.g. Otterbein, 2004, 1997,
Thorpe, 2005). Ferguson (1990, 1984) describes war as ‘organized purposeful group
action, directed against another group … involving the actual or potential applica-
tion of lethal force’, though the use of the word ‘group’ means that it can rightly be
applied to conflicts between tribal and other pre-state communities. Guilaine and
Zammit’s (2005, 24) definition also extends to individual action, ‘bloody clashes
between small groups, raids carried out on neighbouring parties, ambush attacks,
and even individual murders’. Tribal warfare is proposed to consist of ambushes,
surprise attacks and open armed clashes that may escalate to battles, and is pre-
dominantly studied by five theoretical models: biological, cultural, ecological and
economic, historical and political (Helbing, 2006). Why tribal societies engage in
conflict/war is influenced by myriad factors, which include: fighting to maintain
their liberty and individualism, to obtain resources, the development of seden-
tism, and the impact of environmental change on resource availability (Ferguson,
2006, 2000, 1990, Guilaine and Zammit, 2005, Haas, 2004, Kelly, 2007, van der
Dennen, 1995).
The final term to be outlined is inter-personal violence, a relationship scale of
violence that includes murder, fighting, and violence against intimate partners,
children and the elderly (Almgren, 2005, World Health Organization, 2002a). This
type of violence is usually inflicted without the use of weapons (slaps, hits, kicks
and beatings) and includes, psychological abuse, forced sexual intercourse and con-
trolled behaviours (World Health Organization, 2002a, 89). The possible reasons
for this type of behaviour are discussed in Chapter 3 in considering the ‘human
nature or nurture’ question and include early exposure to violence and poverty. A
cross-cultural review by Ember and Ember (1993) and work by Herrenkohl et al.
(2010) highlight the problem of defining this type of violence, because of the vast
cultural variation, as shown by the ever increasing body of psychological and clini-
cal data, as well as the focus of many journals (e.g. James et al., 2003, Le Franc
et al., 2008, Lown et al., 2006, Rosenberg et al., 2006a). Similarly to societal scales
of violence, inter-personal violence has been shown to have enormous economic
costs. For example, the annual cost of domestic violence to the economy of the
United States of America (USA) is greater than $5.8 billion per annum. The costs
of this type of violence are considered to be higher in developing countries but diffi-
cult to estimate – based on lost productive capacity, it is proposed to cost Nicaragua
US$32.7 billion per year (Rosenberg et al., 2006b).
2.2 Violence and Conﬂict in the Past
Conflict is a social phenomenon and should be understood in its social, economic,

political and environmental context (Armit et al., 2007, Armit, 2010, Brothwell,
2004, Carman and Harding, 2004a, Vandkilde, 2006). As with the definition of
different types of violence, approaches to its identification vary considerably (i.e.
Ferguson, 1997, Thorpe, 2005, Vencl, 1984). In part, this reflects the nature of
the archaeological record, because military activities and warfare may not actu-
ally create a physical object that could eventually become an artefact (Carman and
Harding, 2004a, Jones, 2010, Redmond, 1994, Vencl, 1984). Nevertheless, the grow-
ing research area of battlefield archaeology has demonstrated that although prehis-
toric episodes of warfare may be identified, it is far more likely that historical ones
will produce evidence for conflict (Carman and Carman, 2006, Sutherland, 2005
amongst others, Scott et al., 2000, Scott and McFeaters, 2011).
The close ties between culture and conflict can generate items that are associ-
ated with the undertaking of physical violence such as amulets, to provide protec-
tion, luck and motivation (Helbing, 2006, 122, Redmond, 1994). However, making
the connection between the artefact and a past action is contentious, because of
the multiplicity of meanings that an object may have had over its use (Gosden
and Marshall, 1999, White and Beaudry, 2009). One of the most widely applied
approaches is that advocated by Vencl (1984, 125–7), who identifies the following
archaeological sources: weapons, iconography, warrior graves, physical evidence for
injuries and fortifications. He also recommends that evidence for cultural changes
should be investigated for potential links to warfare (Vencl, 1984, 124), this is taken
up by Ferguson (1997, 344) who emphasises the need to undertake regional scales
of analyses to better understand the available data. The application of the type of
data identified by Vencl (1984) have recently been discussed by Armit et al., (2007)
who, like other authors, acknowledge the problems associated with each data type
(e.g. Arkush and Allen, 2008, Chacon and Mendoza, 2007a, 2007b, Chapman,
1999, Ferguson, 2008, Lambert, 2002, Stanton and Brown, 2003).
Violence and Conﬂict in the Past 9
Redmond’s (1994) work on warfare in South America also discusses the attempts
of scholars to identify the incidence of warfare by the presence of certain material
artefacts, for example weapons. Instead, Redmond (1994) suggests that research
should extend to examining a wider range of social activities such as pre-war ritu-
als, and offensive and defensive strategies. Such an approach has been explored by
Arkush and Tung (2013), who united bioarchaeological data and archaeological
evidence for settlement patterns to assess the extent to which Andean populations
in pre-Columbian Peru were affected by warfare between 400 BC and AD 1400.
Their analysis identified regional variation, periods of conflict interspersed with
episodes of peace, and warfare could be linked to periods of climate shock, and
breakdowns in socio-political structures (Arkush and Tung, 2013). Interestingly,
warfare was not linked to large-scale highly impactful transitions, such as the adop-
tion of domesticates, or the use of warfare imagery in material culture and vio-
lent performance, such as the taking of trophy heads and public human sacrifices
(Arkush and Tung, 2013). Overall, they concluded that the most reliable datasets
for examining the scale and brutality of warfare between non-state polities were
settlement patterns and bioarchaeological evidence for trauma; they also noted the
need to re-examine human remains in old collections in order to ensure that evi-
dence is not being missed (Arkush and Tung, 2013).
The greater involvement of bioarchaeology and funerary studies in social archae-
ology has allowed their data to be recognised as an important source of independ-
ent information about violence in the past (Armit, 2010, Crist, 2006, Lowell, 2007,
Milner, 1995). However, it should be noted that many archaeological publications
that use bioarchaeological data often cite a lack of skeletal evidence for violence
in prehistoric populations as evidence for the absence or low incidence of warfare
or conflict, but do not appreciate the role of burial practice and taphonomy (Bello
and Andrews, 2006, Duday, 2009); in addition to the clinically established fact that
over an individual’s lifetime, a person will experience more injuries to the soft tis-
sue compared to the skeleton (e.g. Johansen et al., 2008). Many of the publications
examining the relationship between conflict and skeletal evidence derive from stud-
ies which are supported by primary evidence for conflict, such as battles or con-
quests recorded in primary records (e.g. Brødholt and Holck, 2012, During, 1997,
Ingelmark, 1939, Kępa et al., 2013, Liston and Baker, 1996, Roksandic et al., 2006,
Verano, 2007). However, in recent years, with the growth of forensic anthropology
and its greater integration into bioarchaeological data collection and methodolo-
gies, research has concentrated on how to identify conflict in the absence of primary
sources or other evidence, such as embedded weapons or written sources (e.g. Holst,
2005, Ostendorf Smith, 1997, Smith et al., 2007). Such publications have focused
on the skeletal evidence for trauma – weapon injuries, fractures and post-mortem
modification (Erdal, 2012, Knüsel, 2005, Martin et al., 2001, Murphy et al., 2010,
Verano, 2005), which many consider to reflect only a part of the reality of violence.
As with the growth of the study of structural violence in anthropology (Farmer,
2004), others also propose that additional sources of skeletal information such as,
growth, indicators of stress and general health patterns should also be employed to
investigate social and environmental unrest, conflict and its consequences in past
societies and inequalities (i.e. Armit et al., 2007, Bourbou, 2009, Handler, 2009,
Martin, 1997, Torres Rouff, 2012).
2.3 Social Science Approaches to the Understanding of Violence in Human

Societies: An Overview
In all human societies, violence has not simply been a matter of fights or war-
fare, it is a far more complex and nuanced phenomenon, embedded in social and
cultural frameworks (Abbink, 2000, Aijmer, 2000, Aijmer and Abbink, 2000, De
Vries, 1997, van der Dennen, 1995). The work of Anton Blok (2000) has shown that
within contemporary western, pacified societies, violence is regarded as ‘senseless’
and ‘irrational’, a view which has permeated social science research that sees peace
as ‘natural’ and violence its polar-opposite (see James, 2007, Otterbein, 2012).
Increasingly, this mind-set is being critiqued and shown to be biased, a view encap-
sulated in a statement by Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois (2004a, 2–3), ‘we have
rejected the commonsense view of violence as essential, universal, sociobiological
or psychobiological entity, a residue of our primate and prehistoric evolutionary
origins as a species of hunter-killers’. As these authors adeptly show, we should
move away from a starting-point which rejects violence as part of human nature,
particularly in the light of the considerable amount of clinical, anthropological and
social science research which shows that violence is a common feature of individual
personality traits, and a frequent occurrence in human societies.
Schröder and Schmidt (2001, 1) have examined different approaches to under-
standing violence and describe the three main approaches in the social sciences: the
operational approach that focuses on measurable material and the political causes
of conflict, the cognitive approach which examines the specific cultural construc-
tion of war in a particular society, and the experiential approach that recognises
that violence structures everyday lives and is not restricted to inter-group conflict.
They observe that the majority of studies contain aspects of all three approaches
and note that within anthropology, they ‘make up the whole spectrum of violence’
(Schröder and Schmidt, 2001, 2). These authors recognise that for the success-
ful party, violence has benefits over the short or long term as it is never a totally
isolated act that lacks sense or meaning, because the highly visible nature of vio-
lence enables it to have a strong performance aspect (see also, Blok, 2000). The
results of violent events are unique, because they take place at particular times in
certain locales. These events are frequently incorporated into society’s collective
memory and therefore, can be recreated and enacted to allow the group to con-
tinue to remember actions, promote ideologies, or used to control individuals or
groups by reinforcing the outcome of past events (Schröder and Schmidt, 2001,
6–14). Violence is considered by many to involve at least three people or groups
– the performer, victim and witness, who will have their own interpretation and
understanding of the event (Stewart and Strathern, 2002, 35, Whitehead, 2004).
Social Science Approaches: An Overview 11
The socio-cultural aspects and power made manifest by the performative and ritual
feature of violence emphasises that point that violent action cannot be understood
without examining these aspects, because these are what give violence its power
(Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois, 2004b).
Anthropological research demonstrates that certain social groups, such as young
males, will use violence to obtain short-term benefits, such as goods, wealth and
social status (e.g. Heald, 2000), and that in order to maintain communities, vio-
lence may be adopted as a long-term strategy (Schröder and Schmidt, 2001, 14–18).
Das (2006, 111) suggests that ‘violence makes statements, and it is the task of the
anthropologist to decipher them’, how this occurs is a highly controversial and
much debated subject. Schröder and Schmidt (2001, 19) suggest that the escalating
stages of violence should form part of any analysis. The first stage, conflict, is usu-
ally based on socio-economic differences between groups; confrontation is caused
by the different perceptions of these inequalities by the parties involved; official
sanctioning legitimises violence as a lawful course of action. Finally, war although
not inevitable, usually occurs once the previous three stages have been passed.
These often-contrasting viewpoints emphasise that to interpret human remains,
we require a contextual approach, that enables us to view the data from multiple
standpoints and thus, the experiential approach may be the ‘best-fit’.
2.3.1 Violence in Palaeoanthropology and Prehistory: A Review of the Evidence

The hominid fossil evidence for trauma shows that our ancestors were subject to
predation, such as by raptors in the case of Taung child who appears to have been
captured by an eagle (Berger, 2006, Berger and Clarke, 1995, Berger and McGraw,
2007, McGraw et al., 2006), and large carnivores such as crocodiles, whose bite
removed the left feet of two Olduvai hominids (paratype of H. habilis) during cap-
ture or when crocodiles scavenged the river bank for food (Brochu et al., 2010,
Njau and Blumenschine, 2012, 2006). There is also evidence for accidental injuries,
such as a metatarsal stress fracture, identified in a Homo antecessor recovered from
Atapuerca (Spain) (Martin-Francés et al., 2013). However, another site in Spain
(Sierra de Atapuerca), Sima de los Huesos, has provided evidence for the disposal
of 28 hominid individuals. Examination of the bone fragments identified two peri-
mortem injuries to the frontal bone, which are proposed to represent inter-personal
violence between individuals and may have been inflicted using a stone tool (Sala
et al., 2015). Additionally, there is evidence that hominids practised body process-
ing but the purpose behind this behaviour remains elusive (Pickering et al., 2000,
Russell, 1987).
Neanderthal populations (H. neanderthalensis), who have a genetic relationship
to some modern human populations (Briggs et al., 2009, Green et al., 2008, 2009,
Maricic and Pääbo, 2009), provide some of the earliest evidence for injury in the
bioarchaeological record. Estabrook’s (2007) statistical study examining fracture
patterns in known Neanderthal skeletal remains found that those of undetermined
sex from Krapina (Croatia) had more injuries present than the other individuals in
the study, and at Krapina as a whole, more depressed cranial fractures were pre-
sent, whereas other sites are more likely to have post-cranial fractures. However,
she cautions that these conclusions have to be understood in context, as fossilised
remains not from Krapina cover many tens of thousands of years and different
geographical locales. Other studies have concluded that the majority of injuries
were accidentally acquired, through interactions with large animals during hunt-
ing and because of mobility (Trinkaus, 2012, Trinkaus et al., 2008, Trinkaus and
Zimmerman, 1982), accidents caused by living and sleeping in caves, as suggested
in the case of a fragment of an adult right parietal bone from Krapina which has
evidence for trauma (Mann and Monge, 2006). A new research direction is that
many of the injuries and taphonomic changes observed in Neanderthal individuals
may in fact represent predation attacks by large carnivores (Camarós et al., 2016).
Forensic and clinical data for large carnivore attacks on humans show that primar-
ily, the majority of injuries are sustained by the head and arm, which earlier studies
(see above) have identified as being the most frequently injured body regions, but
interpreted as being caused by hunting interactions (Camarós et al., 2016).
However, a small number of injuries appear to have an inter-personal dimension
(Hutton Estabrook, 2009, Trinkaus and Zimmerman, 1982, Zollikofer et al., 2002),
as it has been suggested that the Shanidar III adult male had been stabbed between
his eighth and ninth ribs a few weeks before his death (Trinkaus and Zimmerman,
1982). Additionally, a statistical study comparing Neanderthal trauma patterns
to eight Holocene hunter-gatherer populations found that their injury profile was
most similar to a Desert dwelling Australian Aboriginal group whose diet was pre-
dominantly vegetarian (Underdown, 2006).
Examination of the skeletal evidence from numerous cave sites in Europe, also
suggests that Neanderthals engaged in body processing, perhaps for the purpose of
cannibalism, although the potential for modern humans (H. sapiens) to have also
cannibalised Neanderthals cannot be ruled out (Defleur et al., 1999, Lalueza-Fox
et al., 2010, White and Toth, 1990). However, the evidence for this in the Krapina
collection has been challenged (Russell, 1987).
The evidence for trauma in earliest Holocene samples of anatomically modern
humans (H. sapiens) increases as our methods and techniques develop (e.g. Bello
et al., 2011). Numerous studies have identified evidence for cranial trauma and
long-bone fractures, many of which appear to be caused by inter-personal violence
as well as accident. These Palaeolithic ancestors were responsible for the rapid
development of technology, particularly those associated with hunting, and it is
the first time that ante- and peri-mortem weapon injuries have been identified in
adult and subadult remains from Europe, (Holt and Formicola, 2008, Trinkaus
and Buzhilova, early view), Africa (Wendorf, 1968), China (Wu et al., 2011) and
the Americas, many still with embedded projectiles. One of the most famous cases
is Kennewick Man (BP 8340–9200), who was discovered in Washington (USA), and
sustained numerous injuries between the ages of 15 and 20 years old: an embedded
stone projectile point in his right ilium, healed rib fractures and a healed fracture to
the right humerus (Powell and Rose, 2007). Despite the compelling nature of this
Social Science Approaches: An Overview 13
evidence, Haas (2001) cautions us to remember that the H. sapiens data are spread
over a period of 10,000 years, but it is important to note that these data add to the
argument rejecting the ‘universal peace’ hypothesis proposed for ancient and his-
torical hunter-gatherer groups (Ember, 1978, Kelly, 2007, Vencl, 1984).
The wider context in which these events occurred is subject to considerable
debate within archaeology, because the study of conflict and warfare has emerged
from a recent academic trend, often known as the ‘pacification of the past’, which
emerged in response to the gory reconstructions of the 1950s and 1960s (Carman,
1993, Gilchrist, 2003, Thorpe, 2005), and the interpretation of past events by pre-
Second World War archaeologists who came from a military background (Parker
Pearson, 2005, Snead, 2012. See also, Otterbein, 2012). This trend was not restricted
to archaeology, the field of anthropology, particularly in North America regarded
warfare as a ‘taboo subject’ and practitioners made great efforts to disassociate
themselves from government-related defence projects, particularly those based in
Vietnam, Korea and South America (Simons, 1999, Layton, 2005). Parker Pearson’s
(2005) review of the study of this topic in archaeology notes that although Marxist
researchers in the 1980s dealt with conflict, this development was overwhelmed
by post-processualist archaeology (1970–1980s) which excluded it from research
frameworks. Vandkilde (2003) proposes that recent conflict in the Balkans (1991–
2001) prompted a shift away from ‘pacification’, and others also point to the popu-
lar book published by Keeley (1996) as a catalyst for this sea change (Gilchrist,
2003). His research examined non-state societies in prehistory and more contempo-
rary anthropological work, and concluded that peaceful societies are the exception
to the rule, the intensity and frequency of war are not related to population density,
and those which trade more frequently with one another, fight more wars between
themselves (Keeley, 1996). Thorpe (2005) cautions that many arguments about the
evolution of warfare are based on historical and contemporary ethnographic and
anthropological studies of traditional societies (Eriksen, 2001), which are believed
to be applicable to ancient societies. Keeley’s (1996) book has been critiqued by a
number of authors (e.g. Carman and Harding, 2004b, Otterbein, 1997), includ-
ing Chapman (2004), whose research based on Neolithic and Copper Age socie-
ties (6200–4000 BC) in eastern Europe showed that over time, these communities
increased the occurrence and variety of weaponry (tool-weapons, weapon-tools
and weapons) and defensive structures, which could be related to the development
of frontier contexts, distribution of resources within the landscape and the emer-
gence of warrior lifestyles. Many of these challenges have arisen from discoveries in
the archaeological and anthropological records, which show that great uncertain-
ties exist in the interpretation of human remains, architecture and material culture
and can be succinctly summed up by Parker Pearson’s question (2005, 24–5): ‘Does
a large body of ambiguous evidence, peppered with a few strong examples where
the implication of violence is hard to deny, really constitute definitive evidence for
violence on the scale of sustained inter-community warfare?’.
Pre-Neolithic (40,000–4000 BC) populations consisted of hunter-gatherer
or hunter-gatherer-fisher communities; ethnographic and anthropological data
demonstrate that inter-personal violence and episodes of inter-group violence

occur in these communities (e.g. Lieverse et al., 2014), but the frequency and type
of violence is different from tribal and settled populations (Knauft, 1987, 476,
LeBlanc and Register, 2004, Ross, 1985). It should also be noted that Ember (1978)
and Kelly (2007) observe that data from hunter-gatherer-fisher communities who
are semi-sedentary or sedentary do engage in organised group violence, but this
is not considered by the majority to be warfare. The work of Ember and Ember
(1994, 1997) and Layton and Barton (2001) show that they have a lower frequency
of conflict compared to non-foragers, and when they live in unpredictable environ-
ments, groups tend to adopt a mutual co-operation tactic to ensure that all survive.
Many studies have found contemporary non-sedentary communities to strongly
promote community harmony (e.g. Knauft, 1987), because social behaviour can be
influenced by close social bonds (North et al., 2009). However, this ‘peaceful savage’
view is very misleading, as these egalitarian communities can have a very high mur-
der rate which often cannot be explained by fraternal interest-group or socialisation
theories (Knauft, 1987, 1986). Caution must also be paid to this evidence, because
such groups have also undergone socio-cultural change in response to historical
events, and we should not assume that they are ‘living fossils’ (Clastres, 2010, 241–2,
van der Dennen, 1995). The extent to which this type of group-level interaction
represents warfare is subject to considerable debate (i.e. Ferguson, 2000, Gat, 1999),
as Otterbein (2004, 11) drily observes, ‘scholars who study war are at war with
each other’. Parker Pearson (2005, 24) suggests that we should be very cautious
about making the leap from a quarrel, skirmish or feud to co-ordinated warfare; a
hypothesis also posited by Ferguson (1997, 326), Helbling (2006, 115) and Milner
(1995), who question the extent to which human remains with evidence for violence
and the extant archaeological evidence, actually supports the presence of warfare
in these groups. This is discussed by Thorpe (2005), who notes that Palaeolithic
and Mesolithic communities have, what Edmonds (1995) describes as ‘tool weap-
ons’ (axes, knives and projectiles), rather than the specialised equipment (armour,
helmets and swords) found in later periods, such as in the Copper and Bronze Ages
(see also, Chapman, 2004, Harding, 2004). Overall, the consensus is that organised
large-scale episodes of violence (warfare) were absent, instead small-scale events
which included lethal and sub-lethal violence against men, women and children
occurred (e.g., Garłowska, 2001, Golitko and Keeley, 2007, Guilaine and Zammit,
2005, Jackes, 2004, Meyer et al., 2009, Roksandic et al., 2006, Teschler-Nicola et al.,
1999, Vencl, 2004); as Pinker (2002, 323) observes, ‘‘our species’ vaunted ability to
make tools is one of the reasons we are so good at killing one another’.
A number of authors, most notably Kelly (2005, 2007) Otterbein (2004) and
Ferguson (1997, 1999, 2000, 2008), suggest that large-scale episodes of group con-
flict did not develop until communities adopted agriculture and became sedentary.
The adoption of farming by prehistoric populations in Europe is considered by the
majority of scholars to be the catalyst for large-scale warfare (i.e. Jantzen et al.,
2011, McMahon et al., 2011), because communities were controlling tracts of land,
creating surpluses and forming trade networks (Cunliffe, 2001, Zvelebil, 1986).
Conclusions 15
The subsequent increase in population (Bocquet-Appel and Bar-Yosef, 2008)

because of this new way of living is also believed to have played a contributory
factor and genetic studies have found that many of the farming communities were
migrants (Bramanti et al., 2009, contra Busby et al., 2012), with populations from
the Carpathian Basin and southeast Europe having genetic affinities to the modern
Near East and Caucasus, providing evidence for patrilineal descent and patrilocal
residency patterns (Szécsényi-Nagy et al., 2015). These waves of migration have
been a reason for conflict; many believe that European rock art showing battles
between archers and warriors records real episodes of conflict between farming
communities (Guilaine, 2005).
Otterbein (2004) proposes that warfare had two origins: through the hunting of
large game animals which provided hunting parties with the opportunity to attack
competing parties, and with forager communities who became sedentary and then
developed into city-states which gave rise to what he recognises as warfare (large-
scale or organised violence) – battles and sieges. This manner of progression is ech-
oed by Cunliffe (2006), whose review of the archaeological evidence proposes that
episodes of conflict occurred in hunter-gatherer groups, which increased with the
adoption of agriculture and the formation of city-states. Apart from the material
culture and architectural evidence for this type of violence in the Mediterranean,
China, South America and the Near East, written records also provide proof of
battles and wars between such states (Arkush, 2009, Cunliffe, 2001, 2006, Ferguson,
2006, Ferguson and Whitehead, 2000, Otterbein, 2004, Sheets, 2003, Vencl, 1984).
This increase is, for the most part, evidenced by human remains from European and
Near Eastern contexts, although temporal and spatial variation in evidence does
exist, particularly in Europe (Thorpe, 2005). For example, Fibiger’s (2009) analysis
of Neolithic cranial trauma in north-west Europe found that Danish samples had a
higher prevalence compared to those from Sweden and Germany.
2.4 Conclusions
This chapter has demonstrated that the language we use to identify and describe
the injuries observed in archaeologically derived human remains must be chosen
with care, because they are not interchangeable – injury and trauma are different.
It has provided an overview of the social science models of violence, such as the
‘Web of Violence’ (Hamby and Grych, 2013, Turpin and Kurtz, 1997b) and shown
that these models have many similar components to a bioarchaeological approach
to archaeology (Martin et al., 2014).
The overview of violence and conflict in the archaeological record, extending
back to hominid remains, shows that a nuanced and pragmatic approach to the
data must be taken in order for such events to be recognised, particularly in pre-
historic contexts. Supporting the consensus, it highlights the valuable contribution
that bioarchaeology can make in the ‘absence’ of other archaeological data, such
as defensive structures and weaponry, and the unique perspective it can provide to
better understand these other strains of evidence (e.g. Arkush and Tung, 2013). It
also shows that how violence is conceptualised and interpreted (i.e. pacification
of the past) in the social sciences greatly impacts on how the evidence from past
lives are both employed by other disciplines (e.g. evolutionary psychology) but also
discussed in bioarchaeology. It also highlights that there are many standpoints (i.e.
perpetrator and witness) that have only received limited attention in bioarchaeol-
ogy (e.g. Osterholtz, 2012) and shows that it is essential to be always mindful that
violence is never a senseless act or without meaning.

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2 Approaches to Understanding and

Interpreting Violence in the Past

2.1 Terms, Meanings and Models

2.2 Violence and Conﬂict in the Past

Conflict is a social phenomenon and should be understood in its social, economic,

2.3 Social Science Approaches to the Understanding of Violence in Human

2.3.1 Violence in Palaeoanthropology and Prehistory: A Review of the Evidence

demonstrate that inter-personal violence and episodes of inter-group violence

The subsequent increase in population (Bocquet-Appel and Bar-Yosef, 2008)

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