Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 27 March 1998:
Vol. 279. no. 5359, pp. 2038 - 2040
DOI: 10.1126/science.279.5359.2038
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Research News

ARCHAEOLOGY:
North America's Wars

Heather Pringle

New analyses presented this week at a special symposium at the Society for American Archaeology meetings in Seattle suggest that prehistoric North America, once considered peaceful, was instead a bitter battlefield where tribes fought over land and water. Clever new ways to read the subtle marks of periodic warfare in such features as the arrangement of villages and the placement of wells, plus direct evidence of massacres (see sidebar), are persuading archaeologists that ancient North American societies made war as fiercely as any nation states in order to acquire scarce resources, particularly when the climate turned harsh. But skeptics argue that warfare advocates have yet to present convincing proof that ancient hostilities claimed many lives.

Read the Full Text

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)