Sponsored by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences
and the
Department of Sociology and Anthropology

War is an intensely debated topic but one for which the lessons of history are selectively applied.  This is a subject to which archaeologists and historians can make significant contributions, but this information is rarely presented to a broader audience.  What can archaeology tell us about war as an element of the human condition?  How does this information apply to present circumstances?  And how can this information be used in a productive fashion?

Elizabeth Arkush (University of Virginia) – It's lonely at the top: chiefdoms, hillforts, and balkanization in the pre-Columbian Andes

Brandon Bies (National Park Service) – Civil War Archaeology

Tony Pollard  (University of Glasgow) – Bayonets and Broadswords: The archaeology of Jacobite warfare in 17th and 18th century Scotland

Clemens Reichel (Oriental Institute, University of Chicago) – When Civilizations collide: early warfare at Hamoukar and other Chalcolithic sites in the Near East (ca. 5,000 - 3,000 B.C.)

James E. Snead (George Mason University) – The Archaeology of War

Julie Solometo (James Madison University )– The co-evolution of war and society in the Pre-Columbian American Southwest

A panel discussion on the role of archaeology in the study of war is also scheduled.

Abstracts

It's lonely at the top: chiefdoms, hillforts, and balkanization in the pre-Columbian Andes
-- Elizabeth Arkush (UVA)

This paper addresses the issue of how smaller-scale societies coalesce into large, centralized polities with institutionalized leadership. Warfare has often been seen as one route of transformation, both by enabling conquest and expansion over outside groups, and by underpinning political leadership within societies.  However, intense warfare also frays social bonds, topples leaders, and entrenches regional political fragmentation.  Fortifications play a major role in shaping these trajectories, one that has perhaps not received due attention.  In the highland Andes of the pre-Inca period, intense chiefdom warfare led to highly Balkanized landscapes dotted with hillforts.  I explore this tension in war's potentialities through an investigation of the Lake Titicaca Basin of southern Peru.  While contact period ethnohistories state the region was politically unified under a powerful warlord dynasty, archaeologically it appears to have remained politically and socially fragmented until the Inca conquest, and even afterward was subject to secession and internal conflict.  I argue that this fragmentation was due in part to the inherent defensive strengths of hillforts in the terrain of the high Andes.  In addition, the surface architectural remains at these hillforts do not indicate major status distinctions within communities.  Leadership was probably weaker and more contingent than is suggested by the ethnohistoric documents, and political support may have waxed and waned in tune with the perceived threat of violent attack.

Systematic Metal Detector Surveys as a Tool in Civil War Archaeology
-- Brandon S. Bies (NPS)

This presentation will explore the use of systematic metal detector surveys in identifying archeological sites associated with the American Civil War. Based primarily on data from Monocacy National Battlefield, these surveys enabled the identification of features relating to the battle, as well as to a number of short- and long-term military encampments. Despite underlying negative connotations about metal detectors and relic hunting, these instruments have long-served archeologists as an effective tool for identifying a range of sites. Finally, this presentation will argue that it is through the study of military encampments that we can better understand the common soldier.

Bayonets and broadswords: The archaeology of Jacobite warfare in 17th and 18th century Scotland
-- Tony Pollard (Centre for Battlefield Archaeology, University of Glasgow)

Between 1689 and 1746 Scotland experienced periodic outbreaks of warfare as the Stuarts, ousted from the throne in 1688 with the exile of James II, attempted to regain the crown, initially from William III and latterly from the Hanoverian dynasty founded by George I.  Three of the major battles from these Jacobite uprisings have been subject to archaeological investigation (the term Jacobite comes from the Latin for James).  At Killiecrankie, the first battle in this conflict, fought in 1690, archaeological survey has shed light on the use of terrain by the Jacobites and succeeded in locating the site of a smaller skirmish which pre-empted the battle.  At Sheriffmuir, the major battle of the 1715 rebellion, a recent survey has for the first time identified the location of the battle and evidence for the rout of the government left by the Jacobite right.  The most thorough investigation however, and indeed one of the most detailed archaeological surveys yet to be carried out on any British battlefield, has focused on Culloden, site of the battle fought in 1746 which was to see the final defeat of the Jacobite cause.  Here, metal detector survey, geophysical survey, terrain analysis and archaeological excavation have all shed important new light on the battlefield and the bloody events which took place on it.  This presentation will provide an overview of this work and in doing so demonstrate how archaeological techniques can advance our understanding of these past conflicts.

When Civilizations collide--early warfare at Hamoukar and other Chalcolithic sites in the Near East (ca. 5,000 - 3,000 B.C.)
-- Clemens Reichel (Oriental Institute, University of Chicago)

Recent excavations at the site of Tell Hamoukar in northeastern Syria uncovered the remains of a ancient city that was destroyed by warfare around 3,500 B.C. This discovery dramatically highlighted the existence of complex urban warfare in the Chalcolithic period. This presentation will introduce the material evidence for the battle at Hamoukar, contextualize its setting within the larger framework of competing interest groups, and review the significance of this discovery in light of other early evidence for warfare in the Ancient Near East.

The Archaeology of War
-- James E. Snead (George Mason University)

Archaeologists have long had a conflicted relationship with the study of war.  Hampered by inflexible conceptual frameworks, issues of empirical interpretation and general stereotypes of irrelevance, they have rarely been part of a broader dialog concerning conflict in human society.  In fact, information about warfare for the vast majority of human history is accessible only through archaeological knowledge, and the chaotic nature of combat means that material evidence is often one of the best sources of inference about such processes even in quite recent times.  Empirical evidence that archaeologists are collecting in numerous geographical and historical settings makes the case that any discussion of conflict in human society must incorporate archaeological perspectives.  Archaeologists must also listen to each other, stepping across subdisciplinary lines to work towards a common perspective on a critical issue.

The co-evolution of war and society in the pre-Columbian American Southwest
-- Julie Solometo (James Madison)

This presentation examines archaeological evidence for armed conflict from central Arizona over a 300-year period. I will discuss how fortifications, site size, evidence for site burning, and settlement pattern data reveal the changing nature of warfare over this interval. Available archaeological evidence indicate that the scale, frequency, tactics, and goals of war changed dramatically at least twice from AD 1000 to AD 1300, and that these changes led to significant reorganization of populations on the landscape, as well as new patterns of social interaction. The potential consequences of war in non-centralized societies also are considered with the use of ethnographic data.

Participants

Elizabeth Arkush (presenter) received her doctorate from UCLA, where she researched late prehispanic forts of the southern Andes. She recently collaborated with Mark Allen at CSU Pomona on an edited book about the archaeology of warfare from a global perspective, and has written about the difficulties of interpreting pre-Columbian Andean warfare. She is currently an Assistant Professor at University of Virginia.

Andrew Bickford  (panelist) is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at George Mason.  He is a socio-cultural anthropologist, specializing in war, state formation, gender, and health issues related to war and violence, with specific interests in Germany and the United States.

Brandon S. Bies (presenter) holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Delaware, and a Masters in Applied Anthropology from the University of Maryland, College Park. He is currently an archeologist for the federal government, with research interests in military archeology and the use of oral history interviews.

Christopher Hamner (panelist) studies the social dimensions of American military history. He earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his current research focuses on the factors that drove American infantrymen in different technological eras, from the eighteenth century to the twentieth.  He’s currently Assistant Professor of History at George Mason.

Meredith Lair (panelist) is Assistant Professor of History at George Mason. She is currently revising her dissertation, Beauty, Bullets, and Ice Cream: Re-Imagining Daily Life in the 'Nam for publication, which examines the landscape of the American military presence in Vietnam from a cultural perspective. Her teaching interests include 20th-century American history and war and American society.

Randolph Lytton (panelist) is Associate Professor in the Department of History and Art History at George Mason.  His research interests are in Alexander the Great, classical intellectual history, and classical historiography.

Tony Pollard (presenter) is Director of the Centre for Battlefield Archaeology at the University of Glasgow. He has carried out battlefield and conflict related projects in Africa, South America and France, in addition to an wide-ranging programme of work in the UK. He is co-editor of the Journal for Conflict Archaeology.

Clemens Reichel (presenter) is a research associate and lecturer at the Oriental Institute of Chicago. He is director of the Oriental Institute's Diyala Project and editor of the Oriental Institute's Iraq Museum Database project. Since 2004 he has been American co-director of the Syrian-American archaeological expedition to Tell Hamoukar in northeastern Syria.

James Snead (organizer/presenter) is Associate Professor of Anthropology at George Mason.   His interests focus on cultural landscapes and conflict, and he is currently director of the Tano Origins Project, a study of migration and warfare in the 13th century American Southwest funded by the National Science Foundation.

Julie Solometo's (presenter) research addresses major social transformations in the history of the American Southwest, including episodes of population aggregation, migration, and the spread of new religious beliefs. She is particularly concerned with understanding the conduct and consequences of  war, in the ancient Southwest and other non-centralized societies. She received her PhD in Anthropology at the University of Michigan and currently teaches at James Madison University.

Photos © James E. Snead 2007.