Archaeological Approaches to Prehistoric Warfare from the Neolithic to the Present

Abstract

The study examines the theoretical and methodological problems of archaeological research on violence, situating them within broader historical and contemporary contexts. War was a marginal topic in prehistoric archaeology, partly due to narratives of a “peaceful prehistory.” Through the analysis of empirical case studies—Neolithic mass graves, evidence of executions, and rock art representations—the paper focuses on a phenomenology of violence and the structural patterns of massacres.