ARCHAEOLOGY: North America's Wars

Science, 1998

in Unlearning the Language of Conquest, edited by Four Arrows (Don Jacobs), 2006

Perhaps the ultimate price we all pay for diminishing the female's power and position in society is war, the great corporate money-machine and ideological tool of fascism. This chapter reveals the relationship between patriarchal culture and war. Discussion of this relationship has typically been suppressed in one of two primary ways. The previous chapter addressed the first way: simply curtail any discussion about the power of Indigenous women in peaceful, traditional Indigenous society. The second way is to re-create history so as to make the world believe that Indigenous cultures were not at all peaceful in the first place. The latter has been a primary occupation for a number of authors for some time. For example, in 2003, St. Martin's Press published Harvard archaeologist Steven LeBlank's book, Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage, co-authored with Katherine E. Register. Like a number of other academic books, such as those referred to in the introduction, this one attempts to demonstrate that waifare today is far less prevalent than it was in ''primitive" cultures. It argues that the assumptions and the actions of early Indigenous People resulted in patterns of violence throughout the world, and that awareness of these P'!tterns in concert with recognizing the advantages of modern technology increases the ability for humans to avoid war in the future. An admirable goal, but their anecdotal evidence contradicts larger bodies of evidence about war in pre-contact cultures. In fact, their "evidence" simply replicates the self-authorizing mythology in which the majority of Americans have been thoroughly steeped. From images of the caveman dragging his mate into a cave afte1· crushing the head of an opponent with a club to memories of Saturday morning television programs depicting blood-thirsty savages, Americans do not need "more awareness" about Indigenous violence. As previous chapters have shown, popular literature, Hollywood movies, and school textbooks have done an ample job of getting the average person to see ancient cultures as having been prone to violence and war. A large body of research, however, opposes claims that war and belligerence were very prevalent in Indigenous cultures. A day spent looking at the Human Resources Area Files demonstrates this clearly. HRAF, an internationally PEACEFUL VERSUS WARLIKE SOCIETIES II I 3 5

2009

Archaeologists, ethnohistorians, osteologists, and cultural anthropologists have only recently begun to address seriously the issue of Native American war and peace in the eastern United States. New methods for identifying prehistoric cooperation and conflict in the archaeological record are now helping to advance our knowledge of their existence and importance.

American Anthropologist, 2001

Patterns of social conflict and cooperation among irrigation communities in southern Arizona from the Classic Hohokam through the Historic period (c. 1150 to c. 1900 CE) are analyzed. Archaeological survey of the Gila River Indian Community has yielded data that allow study of populations within the Hohokam core area (the lower Salt and middle Gila valleys). An etic design approach is adopted that analyzes tasks artifacts were intended to perform. This research is predicated on three hypotheses. It is suggested that (1) projectile point mass and performance exhibit directional change over time, and weight can therefore be used as a proxy for relative age within types, (2) stone points were designed differently for hunting and warfare, and (3) obsidian data can be employed to analyze socioeconomic interactions. This research identifies variation in the distribution of points that provides evidence for aspects of warfare, hunting, and the social mechanisms involved in procuring raw materials. Ethnographic observations and archaeological data suggest that flaked-stone points were designed (1) for hunting ungulates, or (2) for use against people. The distribution of points through time and space consequently provides evidence for conflict, and those aspects of subsistence in which they played a role. Points were commonly made from obsidian, a volcanic glass with properties that allow sources to be identified with precision. Patterns in obsidian procurement can therefore be employed to address socioeconomic interactions. By the 18th century, horticulturalists were present in only a few southern Arizona locations. Irrigation ii communities were more widely distributed during the Classic Period; the causes of the collapse of these communities and relationships between prehistoric and historic indigenes have been debated for centuries. Data presented here suggest that while changes in material culture occurred, multiple lines of evidence for cultural continuity from the prehistoric to Historic periods are present. The O'Odham creation story suggests that the population fluctuated over time, and archaeological evidence supports this observation. It appears that alterations in cultural practices and migrations occurred during intervals of low population density, and these fluctuations forced changes in political, economic, and social relationships along the middle Gila River.

Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2010

Wallace, Henry D. 2011 What is a Prehistoric Hohokam Community? In Craft Specialization in the Southern Tucson Basin: Archaeological Excavations at the Julian Wash Site, AZ BB:13:17 (ASM): Part 2. Synthetic Studies, edited by H. D. Wallace, pp. 651-681. Anthropological Papers No. 40. Center for Desert Archaeology, Tucson.

Journal of Arizona Archaeology, 2020

Hohokam settlements of southern and central Arizona have been the focus of nearly 40 years of intensive field investigations and yet there are still major gaps in our knowledge of village structure and organization. New maps of extant Hohokam villages dating from approximately AD 800 to 1050 (including many never previously mapped) are compared to data from villages that have received large-scale excavation to identify commonalities in structure. Structural units consisting of plazas surrounded by suprahousehold groups and their associated cemeteries, refuse deposits, roasting facilities, and ball court(s) are found to be the basic universal social unit which is replicated on larger villages. Some patterning in the specific arrangements of these structural units was identified, as were patterns related to the length of occupation. Findings of the study are considered for their implications in cultural resource management investigations.