War Before Civilization

The book, by an archaeologist of prehistoric Europe, sets its argument against a consensus it treats as both settled and wrong on the evidence. For roughly fifty years, the book argues, popular and scholarly accounts had agreed that warfare before states was rare, largely ritualised, low in casualties and of little consequence, a thing introduced to simple societies by contact with civilisation rather than native to them. His book sets out to show that the archaeological and historical record says otherwise. Drawing on excavation evidence together with comparisons between prehistoric societies and modern European states, and taking in cases such as the Plains peoples of North America, he argues that prehistoric warfare was more frequent, more deadly in proportion to population, and less restrained than the warfare of the modern era. The subtitle names the target directly, the myth of the peaceful savage, and the book treats that myth as an intellectual habit with its own history rather than as a finding. It was published by Oxford University Press in 1996 and became one of the most cited and most argued-over works in the field, which is a matter this page does not settle.

Written from the publisher description, Oxford University Press.

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• Lawrence Keeley