Doctoral Dissertation Research: War During the Early Agricultural Period in the North American Southwest: Evaluating the Role of Material Need and Status

在Bruce Huckell博士的指导下，Phil Geib将研究北美西南部农业首次出现期间（约公元前2000年至公元500年）战争的原因。重点是来自科罗拉多高原的预陶瓷材料，被称为“篮子制造者II”，但这项研究也将考虑该地区的战争如何适应更大的西南地区。被杀的可能性显然是战争的高成本，但对土地或食物的需求是充分和必要的权衡吗？这种解释在直觉上似乎令人满意，因为生存的手段可能会激发群体间的冲突。然而，物质利益的逻辑可能不会推动乐队和部落之间的斗争。即使资源丰富，群体内对地位和支配地位的竞争也会持续下去，因为个体在社会中的相对地位会影响繁殖成功率。资源短缺是偶发的，而社会地位则需要无休止的断言。战争可以作为这种斗争的舞台；甚至可能是识别成年和获得配偶的必要条件。拟议的研究将收集新的和现有的数据，以解释特定情况下的战争，并扩大到更普遍地了解战争的原因。本研究有两个主要目标：(1)评估篮子制造商案例中战争的物质主义解释；(2)评估地位竞争作为动机的作用。这项研究将确定群体间冲突（大屠杀）的直接证据与与资源压力有关的三个因素之间的时间关系，这些因素是：干旱和阿罗约切割、营养压力的骨骼指标和相对人口水平。评估地位竞争的作用将是一个涉及岩石艺术、墓葬协会和其他物质遗迹的推理练习。特别强调的是专门的木制文物，这些文物可能是在仪式化的战斗“防御棒”中用作防御工具，用于偏转无翼飞镖。研究的一个重要部分将涉及这些棍子的分析和直接AMS测年，并通过使用磨损来解释功能。合作与冲突是人类社会在各个层面上普遍存在的特征，战争正处于它们的交叉点：最极端的竞争形式，在这种竞争中，成功需要同等程度的合作。人类近代史上的恐怖事件充分表明，战争值得认真的人类学分析。过去没有简单的答案来防止现代世界的战争，但它应该让我们更好地了解促成因素。拟议的研究有望在广泛的理论意义上为解释战争做出贡献，同时阐明战争如何以及为什么在特定情况下出现。在这段时间内，战争还没有被系统地研究过，很少有考古记录被用来研究战争作为一个因变量。考古学可以对人类对战争的理解做出重要贡献，因为只有考古学才能获得在复杂社会形态出现之前的遥远过去的长时间间隔的记录。考古学也提供了一个有用的对应物，来反驳关于简单社会中战争的有争议的民族志记录。

Under Dr. Bruce Huckell's supervision, Phil Geib will examine the causes of war during the interval when farming was first practiced in the North American Southwest (ca. 2000 BC - AD 500). The emphasis is on preceramic materials from the Colorado Plateau designated as Basketmaker II, but the study will also consider how warfare in this area fits into the greater Southwest. The potential to be killed is an obvious high cost of war, but is a need for land or food a sufficient and necessary trade off? Such an explanation seems intuitively satisfying because the means of survival could motivate intergroup conflict. Yet the logic of material gain may not drive band and tribal fights. Even when resources are abundant, within-group competition for status and dominance persists because an individual's relative position within society impacts reproductive success. Whereas resource shortages are episodic, social position requires endless assertion. War may serve as an arena for such striving; perhaps even a requisite for recognition of adulthood and attaining a mate. The proposed research will assemble new and existing data relevant to explaining war in a particular case and by extension to an understanding of war's causes more generally.This research has two main goals: (1) assess a materialistic account for war in the Basketmaker case and (2) evaluate the role of status competition as a motive. This research will establish the temporal relationship between direct evidence for intergroup conflict (massacre assemblages) and three factors relevant to resource stress as a causative role: droughts and arroyo cutting, skeletal indicators of nutritional stress, and relative population levels. Assessing the role of status competition will be an inferential exercise involving rock art, burial associations, and other material remains. Particular emphasis will be placed on specialized wooden artifacts that may have served as defensive tools used to deflect atlatl darts in ritualized battles 'fending sticks.' A significant part of the research will involve the analysis and direct AMS dating of these sticks with the interpretation of function informed through use-wear.Cooperation and conflict are pervasive features of human society at all scales and war is at their intersection: the most extreme form of competition where success requires cooperation in equal measure. The horrors of recent human history amply demonstrate that war deserves serious anthropological analysis. The past holds no simple answers to prevent war in the modern world, but it should allow better appreciation of the precipitating factors. The proposed research promises to contribute in a broad, theoretical sense towards explaining war while simultaneously illuminating how and why war appeared in a specific case. War has not been systematically investigated for the interval considered and seldom has the archaeological record been used to examine war as a dependent variable. Archaeology can make an important contribution toward an anthropological understanding of war because it alone accesses records from long intervals of the distant past prior to the rise of complex social formations. Archaeology also provides a useful counterpoint to the contentious ethnographic record about war in simple societies.