Warfare Violece and the Intellectual Battlefield - Book Report/Review Example

Warfare violence Introduction The intellectual battlefield that was framed by the archaeologists, Jean Jacques Rousseau and some other social scientists raised basic questions concerning war. Is it a usual affair for an aberrant pathology, or stateless society? Is it that our evolutionary past has the seeds of war woven in it and locks us into an unavoidable violence rehearsal, or is it that the war intensified or arose at some different human history threshold or to the divisional forms of social organization, the advent of expansion of the imperial, the rise of the divided societies, or the transformation to the sedentary life ways. Other questions that arise include the extent to which the war practices shapes the unique milieus culture, and how warfare is interwoven within the rest of the culture and society. Those particular questions have remained the in the domain of many male scholars who were both mavericks and pioneers in the field. This though is urged by Keeley Lawrence’s 1996 War before Civilization, was greatly influenced by the two bloody decades of factional and civil conflicts. A remarkable book on war archaeology has amassed adequate evidence to lift decisively these concerns out of the theorizing realm. Such works enable us to go beyond realizing the presence of war and understanding its practice and contribute meaningful ideas about the effects of warfare, its causes and the relationship it has with the culture and society over time. This paper therefore seeks to discuss warfare violence as it is seen from various scholarly readings. According to Ferguson, the significant levels of warfare violence that subsisted in the pre contact Americas were not a big surprise to the archaeologists who had their eyes open in the last two decades. The battle had been decided. The warfare violence resulted into brutality and misery of human to the extent of that of Hiroshima or Gettysburg. It also resulted into grim as well as difficult deaths and traumatized lives. In some particular regions, warfare violence instilled a consuming fear that changed the majority of people into fortified refuges. From Tierra del Fuego to the Western Alaska, there was a frequent war made by the societies of the Amerindian of all sizes and shapes. The war resulted from even the supposed peace communities and people and the portable forager bands. These warfare left wakes of bloody vengeance with little or no gain to the participants. This caused a lot of fear and loss to the people who were involved in the war. There was evidence of sacrifice of the Aztec which had an express goal of declining revisionist and national claims. There exist dismemberment, heart excision and personal cannibalism in the course of warfare. The scale of the warfare results into a growing impression horrific savagery making people to sympathize with the poor revisionists. Over the last decade, archaeologists and anthropologists have been into various contortions as they steer in between the loyalty they owe to people and their moral repugnance. The earlier scholars who were appalled by the world war carnage envisaged peaceful primitive and disported themselves in an inconsequential battles. This view finally collapsed due to the war of the Melanesia and Amazonia which were filled with ethnographies. Many anthropologists today avoid revealing their subjects as the barbarians who are thirsty of blood through recasting indigenous warfare as a rational response to the conditions. The anthropologists have begun to emphasize on the context of culture that surrounds the warfare violence especially human sacrifice which is a huge ritualized violence. The warfare violence in essence was never mayhem but a profound consequential action that propitiated spirits and channeled bereavement and fear into the appropriate cultural ways while maintaining the cosmos and the fabric of the society. Warfare violence is a ritually and politically potent concisely because it is extraordinary horrific and involves terrible suffering. It inflicts pain and fear on the perfectly powerless victims at the moment of their annihilation. This was represented in the iconography and trophies of violence. Sensationalizing violence is distasteful. It is problematic to completely cast violence as rational. Communities should not empty pain and conflict in the name of achieving religious cultural meaning and the write off the victims in the process of pre history. According to Ferguson, taking responsibility of warfare violence is still a challenge. This actually ends up in the heart of the strained commitment of the anthropologists to the cultural relativism. Therefore the fundamental aspects of violence should be firmly kept in focus by the people to avoid violence. Some of these fundamental aspects of violence include its political and material aims, the terror and suffering that is indispensable to both its significance and aims, and its ideological and cultural significance. The communities should therefore no only give demonstrations on the possibility of the pre contact warfare violence, but also to provide insights on the effects and cause of violence and war as well as its varied practice. It is of great significance to note that the existence of warfare violence motivations such as ethnic hatred, revenge, mistrust and fear the seizure of children and women as well as the retaliation of a hostile sorcery or witchcraft should be eliminated from the community to keep away war and violence from the people. There are other significant factors that should be taken with consideration to ensure war and violence is discouraged in the society. Some of these factors include the climate change, population pressure as well as the rising complex polities that wage the new types of war. Some contributions of archaeologists today cease to focus on the rituals or iconography to disclose advancing cultural traditions that informs warfare violence. It can be deduced from most studies that there was at least low to moderate raiding levels nearly all over the continents. Even within the small scale and decentralized societies, there existed a big deal of regional and local variations in the violence incidences depending perhaps on the regional factors of social scale and population pressure. It is also evident that as the regions of societies expand and get more complex, the engage themselves in warfare violence that is in large scale, competition for trade route controls for the prestigious goods, competition for the elite status as well as territorial conquest among other states. Some societies exhibited brutal and intense warfare. The era of the brutal and intensified war and violence related perhaps to the 1100 to 1400 AD of the Little Ice Age between in North America. These were the periods of devastating epidemics, famine, collapsing social networks and mass migration. The period seemed like the end of the world and hence was accompanied by the unrelenting, vicious and desperate warfare. The attitudes of culture generally played a vital role on how the societies responded to the times of crisis. Some scholars have argued that the smallpox devastation that was intersected with the initially existing Iroquois belief that almost any kind of death was resulting from hostile sorcery contributed to the warfare violence. Most societies engaged in warfare in order to underpin the warfare that the Iroquois waged on their cultural and traditional enemies. The cultural mastery of deaths that were sown on a large scale by the diseases introduced by the Europeans led to most warfare in the local areas. This was because there was an already existing low level of warfare in such societies. In addition, the ingredients of war such as defenses, tactics, weapons and alliances did not have to be invented from the scratch. As the warfare escalated within the societies, the potential or real enemies had their hands laid ready for war within the linguistic and ethnic divides. These divides were created majorly by the displacement of population I the period of upheaval. The warfare violence however was directed to the socially distant people who could easily be mistrusted and dehumanized. The majority of the harsh warfare although internecine appeared among the ethnic frontiers the social scientists of the modern conflicts of ethnic groups fervently reject the idea that the divisions of ethnic groups cause conflicts themselves and argues that the stress resulting from other factors is what is expressed as the warfare violence along the ethnic lines. However, it is clear that linguistic and ethnic distinctions made reconciliation more difficult and encouraged warfare violence. In fact warfare violence has surely contributed to the regionalization of style, the sharpening of the differences among the ethnic groups as well as the restrictions of using the networks of interactions. To the participants of warfare violence, warfare was never experienced primarily or understood as a rejoinder to the major resource stresses, social change, destabilizing Western contact or even displacement of population. War and violence was particularly about revenge. In fact it was a fresh violence among the existing enemies. According to Ferguson, most of the war causes analyses cite revenge, but it is also evident that mutilations, traumatic abductions and massacres are also elements that cause war. Warfare is particularly understood by both the victims and attackers through the hauling emotions of fear, rage and grief. To some aggressors, these emotions are rendered meaningless as far as the deeper causes of war are concerned. However, it is possible to reconcile the divergent causes of war through correlating the recurrent war with both the fear of the outsiders and unpredictable natural disaster. The scarcity of resources and its unpredictability align together with intensified warfare violence the sequence of archaeology as well as with the historical sequences. Although to the involved persons, the crises were seen as much of social than ecological. As the children socialized to loathe fear and enmities deepened, the cycles of revenge grew bloodier and difficult to break. There is no particular place in the cultural matrix that evidently surrounds the warfare like treatment and taking of the human trophies. Some of the body parts from the slain enemies are curetted, processed and used for ritual purposes. This was present in almost all the geographic Americas regions with some parts appearing to have huge antiquity. The aspect of trophy taking is also available outside Americas in major regions of the world. The scalps and heads are the hub of the trophy taking. On the other and, the cultural meaning of trophy taking are distinctive and manifold. Various traditions integrated the aspect of trophy taking into their own cosmologies, usually tracing it to the culture heroes or deities. The conceptual linkage between regeneration or fertility and trophy taking was initially present in various regions although expressed differently from mythological renewal around the Mississippi area to the scalps of rainmaking in the Southwest. The treatment of trophies varied in regions. In particular places, the scalps were danced with and discarded, and in other regions, specific trophies such as the preserved heads and the finger bone necklaces were processed carefully, worn and used in different ceremonial functions where they were handed as the heirlooms. In addition, various themes give explanations why such trophies were common in the warfare as well as why the scalps and heads were suited uniquely to serve the purpose. Trophy taking is a violation of human body and forms a barefaced insult to those who are defeated. Trophies were displayed to constitute a proof of dramatic victory and proclaim the prowess of the warrior of their owners and takers. According to Ferguson, the trophy heads were also used to make intimidating and scary warnings to the enemies. These are things that stimulated warfare violence in the past. Taking the essential part of the body such as the head could possibly prevent the harmonious afterlife and restrain the dead from coming back to attack the real killers. The trophy was seen as a possibility of a potent magic for curative reasons, fighting, bringing rain and hunting. These beliefs encouraged warfare along the ethnic lines and hence should be discouraged completely. Conclusion In summary, the war resulted from even the supposed peace communities and people and the portable forager bands. These warfare left wakes of bloody vengeance with little or no gain to the participants. This caused a lot of fear and loss to the people who were involved in the war. The significant levels of warfare violence that subsisted in the pre contact Americas were therefore not a big surprise to the archaeologists who were aware of the pre existing levels of war among the societies for the reasons mentioned. The battle had been decided between the communities themselves and was slowly going on. This warfare violence resulted into brutality and misery of human to the extent of that of Hiroshima or Gettysburg. It also resulted into grim as well as difficult deaths and traumatized lives. The scale of the warfare results into a growing impression horrific savagery making people to sympathize with the poor revisionists. In some particular regions, warfare violence instilled a consuming fear that changed the majority of people into fortified refuges. The trophies humiliated the victims and the enemies were strictly warned from interfering. As discussed before, from Tierra del Fuego to the Western Alaska, there was a frequent war that was made by the societies of the Amerindian of all sizes and shapes regardless of the intension. Some were defending their society while others were in search of power and control over the major commodities and routes. There was evidence of sacrifice of the societies which had an express goal of declining revisionist and national claims by their enemies. There exist dismemberment, heart excision and personal cannibalism in the course of warfare. Works Cited Ferguson, Brian. Explaining War: In The Anthropology of Warfare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2000. Print. Read More