Late Prehistoric Warfare in Eastern North America: Spatial and Temporal Variation in its Nature and Intensity

考古材料提供了一个关于小规模或“部落”社会中战争的性质和强度的暂时的深刻视角，这些社会主导了人类的大部分存在。特别有趣的是，随着时间和空间的变化，群体间的紧张局势升级为彻底的暴力的可能性，考古学上使用有围墙的定居点和伤亡人员的骨骼来衡量。从世界若干地区收集到的充分数据表明，存在着长期的冲突，但也存在着长期的相对和平。然而，关于族群间可能在何时何地爆发战争，以及为什么会发生战争，人们知之甚少。这一主题具有持久的意义，因为今天的人们继续面临着以社区和亲属为界限（部落而不是国家身份）的群体之间的冲突，这些冲突可能造成极大的生命和财产损失。这个为期三年的国家科学基金会项目，由乔治·r·米尔纳博士和乔治·卓别林先生主持，将首次全面介绍史前北美东部人们在何时、何地以及为什么相互争斗，重点是史前的最后1500年（大约公元1500年之前）。这一时期发生了巨大的文化变化，以相对平等的社会关系为特征的早期粮食生产社区转变为更大的农业社会，其中许多由世袭酋长统治。该项目完成了一项多年（没有资金）的努力，收集了考古学（被栅栏包围的定居点）和骨学（带有冲突相关创伤的骨骼，如箭伤）数据，这些数据是了解战争是如何进行的，谁参与了（伤亡），以及冲突的强度是如何随着时间和史前北美东部的变化而变化的。该项目的第一步涉及生成多个密度面，通过地理信息科学（GIS）程序进行插值，总结冲突考古证据的空间分布。结果可以粗略地可视化为1500年期间不同时间点的一系列叠加图，这些叠加图显示了有大量战争证据的地区，而不是那些很少或没有冲突迹象的地区。把这些密度面放在一起，每一个密度面都代表了一个独立的时间片段，它们将描绘北美东部地区族群间冲突的盛衰。一旦收集起来，这些资料将与具有广泛特征的文化区和环境区结合起来，以确定与可能发生战争和不发生战争的时期和地点有关的条件。该项目的第二个组成部分评估了高密度表面之间的对应关系，这些表面以高低战争为特征，以及文化和自然区域的拼接，这些区域在空间分布、资源生产力、它们之间的边界以及彼此之间的相对隔离方面各不相同。这样做，就有可能确定，在粗粒度的水平上，冲突是否主要是物质生活条件的功能，特定文化制度和机构所定义的社会关系，或两者的结合。这个国家科学基金会的项目也可以作为一个“概念证明”的程序，可以应用于许多种类的考古数据，适合转换为密度表面的分析目的。它直接解决了一个特别令人烦恼的考古学问题：如何从数量上处理来自大地理区域的质量参差不齐的数据，这些数据是分析多种形式的人类互动的适当尺度。这项工作补充了对特定地区和个别遗址的更集中的研究，这些研究强调当地影响，对社会和自然环境的特定适应，战斗的直接动机，以及特定社会中战争或与和平有关的活动的仪式和社会角色。

Archaeological materials provide a temporally deep perspective on the nature and intensity of warfare among the small-scale, or "tribal," societies that dominated most of human existence. Of particular interest is variation over time and space in the chances of intergroup tensions escalating into outright violence, measured archaeologically using walled settlements and skeletons of casualties. Sufficient data have been collected from several parts of the world to indicate the existence of long periods when conflicts were common, but also prolonged stretches of relative peace. Little is known, however, about precisely where and when fighting among groups was likely to break out, and why that occurred. This subject is of enduring significance as people today continue to confront conflicts involving groups defined along community and kin lines (tribal as opposed to national identities) that can be exceedingly costly in lives and property.This three-year National Science Foundation project, conducted by Dr. George R. Milner and Mr. George Chaplin, will produce the first comprehensive account of when, where, and why people fought each other in prehistoric eastern North America, with an emphasis on the last 1500 years of prehistory (prior to ca. AD 1500). Dramatic cultural changes occurred during that time as early food-producing communities characterized by relatively egalitarian social relations were transformed into larger agricultural societies, many of which were dominated by hereditary chiefs. The project completes a multi-year (unfunded) effort to assemble the archaeological (settlements surrounded by palisades) and osteological (skeletons with conflict-related trauma such as arrow injuries) data necessary to understand how warfare was conducted, who was involved (casualties), and how the intensity of conflict varied over time and across prehistoric eastern North America. The first step in the project involves the generation of multiple density surfaces, interpolated through Geographic Information Science (GIS) procedures, that summarize the spatial distribution of archaeological evidence for conflict. The result can be loosely visualized as a series of overlays at various points over a 1500 year-long period that show areas with abundant evidence of warfare as opposed to those with little or no signs of conflict. Taken together, the density surfaces, each representing a separate slice of time, will depict the waxing and waning of intergroup conflict across eastern North America. Once assembled, that information will be combined with broadly characterized cultural areas and environmental zones to identify conditions associated with periods and places where warfare was likely to occur and where it was not. This second component of the project evaluates the correspondence between parts of density surfaces characterized by high and low warfare and a patchwork of cultural and natural areas, which varied in their spatial distribution, resource productivity, the boundaries between them, and their relative isolation from one another. By doing so, it should be possible to establish whether conflicts, at a coarse-grained level, were largely a function of the material conditions of life, social relations defined by particular cultural systems and institutions, or a combination of both.This NSF project also serves as a "proof of concept" for procedures that can be applied to many kinds of archaeological data suitable for conversion to density surfaces for analytical purposes. It squarely addresses a particularly vexing archaeological problem: how to deal quantitatively with uneven-quality data from the large geographical areas that are the appropriate scale for analyses of many forms of human interaction. This work complements more focused studies of specific regions and individual sites that emphasize local effects, specific accommodations to social and natural settings, the proximate motivation for fighting, and the ritual and social roles of war or peace-related activities in specific societies.