# Villages caused war



## Brian G Turner (Sep 16, 2003)

There's an interesting assertion here that war rightly began with the formation of the first permanent settlements.

Although an interesting idea, I wonder if there's a very real danger of over-simplifying the issue? After all, I don't think there's an argument that the eruption of inter-tribal hostilities _only_ began with the formation of permanent village settlements.

A common sense approach would simply suggest that it would be easier for nomadic peoples to avoid each other, and perhaps even do so preferentially. This, obviously, is far harder with permanent settlements - especially when the concentration of resources was often a magnet for aggressive actions by others seeking to grab something of it for themselves.

Anyway, here's the article:

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994167



> *Early villages hold the key to war*
> 
> The advent of affluent village life with communities splitting into clans may have heralded the first wars, suggests archeological analysis of ancient Mexico.
> 
> ...


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## littlemissattitude (Sep 16, 2003)

Interesting article.  I tried to follow the link to the journal reference, but it came up that the article wasn't available.  I'll be interested to see more.

I am somewhat familiar with the work of Marcus and Flannery, having read some of their work for a paper on archaeological theory I wrote for a class last year, and it seems to me that they sometimes come to conclusions that do not necessarily follow from the evidence.

This is not that rare in the sort of cognitive archaeology that they practice.  I'm not saying that cognitive archaeology is a bad thing.  I certainly prefer it to processual archaeology, which tries to quantify everything, and rejects the usefulness of any kind of speculation that isn't readily quantifiable.

Still, I am wondering, especially, how they _know_ that the fire on the palisade at San Jose Mogote was not accidental.  It seems like that would be very difficult to discern from the archaeological record, and I would have to see more detailed information on what was actually found before taking that conclusion at face value.


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## Brian G Turner (Sep 17, 2003)

Certainly I guess there's going to be lots of speculation involved - I noticed the fire issue, too. Warning bells went off at the possible suggestion that the house from 1500 BC was destroyed intentionally by fire. But, still, it;s a rational theory - at least, to some extent. Perhaps here, though, it's a case of testing a proving a hypothesis through examination of a site, rather than allowing the site itself to determine the required hypotheses for investigation. Or maybe that's too harsh. Either way, quite interesting.


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## littlemissattitude (Sep 17, 2003)

I'm not saying that it isn't possible that they are correct.  They very well could be.  But, in the absence of concrete evidence their conclusions must remain in the realm of speculation, no matter how educated a speculation it is.  I believe that there is room for speculation in archaeology - which is why I am not that fond of the processualists; they see no room for any kind of speculation or extrapolation at all.

It just bothers me when sweeping generalizations are presented as a definitive statement of what happened in the absence of evidence.  There very well may be such evidence in Marcus and Flannery's paper.  That's why I would like to read it; to see if that is the case.  The problem with much reporting on anthropology and archaeology, and all science reporting for that matter, is that the reports from the actual researchers are sometimes digested and summarized to the point where generalizations are often made that do not reflect precisely what the researchers have written or said.  Newspapers and newsmagazines are the worst at this, but unfortunately even science publications do this sometimes.


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## Brian G Turner (Sep 20, 2003)

I quite agree with everything you're saying, *littlemissattitude*.


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