Beyond Hobbes and Rousseau: Warfare in the Late Prehistoric American Midwest Seminar

Centuries of commentary on the nature and role of warfare in the small-scale societies of the distant past are only now being informed by hard archaeological evidence. Despite limited data, the late prehistoric inhabitants of eastern North America have long been characterized as having lived in a state of either Hobbesian “warre” or Rousseauian harmony. Recent work with skeletons and settlements, however, has identified considerable temporal and spatial variability in the level of intergroup conflict. The intensity of hostilities appears to have been associated with variation across time and space in demographic, social, and environmental settings. Archaeological evidence shows that warfare during late prehistory was broadly similar to what often took place in more recent times, as described in historic and ethnographic accounts from other parts of the world.

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