Archaeologist David Dye of the University of Memphis has produced the first comprehensive study of prehistoric war and peace in eastern North America. It is long overdue and fills a huge gap in our understanding of ancient societies. Violence, according to Dye pervades all aspects of social life. So does peace. Both can only be understood in the historical context of millennia.
Since the first controlled excavations, archaeologists have discovered evidence of burned villages, traumatic injuries, and fortifications, yet for some inexplicable reason the myth of “peaceful savages” free of the ills of Western culture including violent conflict persisted into recent times. Excavation of a scalped Archaic man became national news. Disbelief accompanied the discovery of hundreds of massacred ancient men, women, and children in a South Dakota ditch in the 1970s.
The corollary of course, is that humans are by nature violent, and that warfare is the natural state. In War Paths, Peace Paths, Dye closely examines both cooperation and conflict, taking us to a deeper understanding how ancient cultures dealt with war and peace. Dye finds three trends that peace and violence took in eastern North America over the last 13,000 years. First are personal grudges that were typical of family-level hunter-gathers. Second is kin-based feuding. Vengeance is sought after a killing and is usually limited one or two homicides by temporary kin groups. The third trend is warfare that becomes impersonal aggression between communities accompanied by alliances and diplomacy.
War Paths, Peace Paths skillfully traces all three trends in Native culture throughout eastern North America as violence and peace evolved over some 11,000 years. Just as warfare became more organized and effective over time, so too did peace making as illustrated by the sophisticated institutions of the Iroquois tribes.
