The cultural evolution of warfare practices: examining the roles of social structure, political complexity, and resource ecology with cross-cultural comparative analyses

Thesis

This thesis investigates how forms of wartime violence changed with the scale and complexity of past human societies. Data on aspects of social and political structures, subsistence practices, and warfare were coded from ethnographic and secondary historical sources for a global sample of societies. Four studies are presented that examine variation in warfare cross-culturally and historically, specifically the prevalence of self-sacrificial actions for other group members, levels of indiscriminate killing of enemies, and the taking of enemy body parts as trophies. These behaviors were tested for relationships with social complexity and associated variables, including military formalization and reliance on agriculture. Overall, there was no evidence for any clear relationships. These efforts resulted in the creation of datasets representing archaeologically, historically, and ethnographically recorded societies and defined new variables for specific wartime behaviors which had not previously been the focus of quantitative comparative analyses. More broadly, it contributes to the growing area of cultural evolutionary research with comparative historical databases and to research on the evolution of warfare through human history.

Authors: Basava, K

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-eoxag2rg7
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: cross-cultural; warfare; cultural evolution
• Subjects: History; Evolution; Quantitative research; Anthropology; Warfare, Prehistoric