A third mass grave has been found in Germany depicting the outcome of some sort of battle apparently between different tribes of LBK (Linearbandkeramik) farmers circa 5000 BC. A pattern of systematic warfare is emerging toward the end of the 600 year run of the LBK during a period of climate change (no doubt antrhopomorphic due to slash and burn agriculture ;) ). All of the mass graves show extensive blunt force trauma (along with some "arrow wounds"). The graves contain mostly children, men and old women; notably absent are young women. Perhaps we can start to extend our long-held start point for wargame rules from 3000BC to 5500BC? How about this for an LBK army list (5500 - 4900 BC): 1 x General (3Aux or 3Wb), 5 x warriors (3Aux or 3Wb), 6 x archers (3Bw or Ps).
http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-evidence-prehistoric-massacre-europe-190356970.html
A tad too many archers to extract from some arrow wounds,but otherwise...
The earliest (post-3000 BC) phase of the DBA/M/MM "Early Northern Barbarians" list is mostly archers anyway, isn't it?
Same story here (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33967908), with a couple of incidental details.
Arrowheads:
"As well as the blunt-force trauma injuries to bones, many arrowheads were found in amongst the skeletons."
Other debris:
"But in the pits, the bodies have been dumped in haphazard fashion, and are surrounded by all manner of waste objects."
This is unusual for a 'mass grave', but just what one would expect of victims from a serious flood, all washed up together with broken bones and random debris. Were there cut marks (as opposed to abrasions and 'blunt-force trauma') on the bones it might suggest warfare.
That said, it is unlikely these people never fought anyone, at least when not being flooded out of house and home, and the presence of arrowheads indicates that archery played a significant part in their lives. Hence they should at least be eligible for a potential army list.
Recalling earlier reports, I pulled up this from wikipedia which may help
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talheim_Death_Pit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talheim_Death_Pit)
Suffice it to say, the latest one is not unique.
I see, the full quote was many arrowheads, which makes sense
Quote from: Mark G on August 18, 2015, 12:47:41 PM
I see, the full quote was many arrowheads, which makes sense
Indeed. It also raises the puzzle why anyone butchering the local population in the crudest possible way would throw, among other things, perfectly good arrows into the pit with them.
Quote from: Erpingham on August 18, 2015, 12:41:00 PM
Suffice it to say, the latest one is not unique.
Also not unique is this mass demise apparently occurring before the introduction of weaponry into Europe, at least according to some.
"
An opposing theory accounting for the violence at Talheim is that Europe was peaceful at the time the victims were living. Hand-crafted weapons, rather than simply hunting tools, did not appear in Europe until 4500 BC at the earliest, a full 500 years after the bodies were dumped at Talheim." - Talheim Wikipedia entry.
One can take this with the proverbial saline pinch, as 'hunting tools' presumably include spears and bows, which could easily double as 'weapons'*. What I wonder is why a culture would arrange to conduct its raids only near convenient pits into which the victims could be dumped
en masse. The traditional European approach to enemy corpses seems to have been to leave them where they lay for the wolves and ravens.
[*Amerindians of North America traditionally used hunting arrows and war arrows, the difference being the way the feathers were set relative to the arrowhead. To hunt animals, the arrowhead blade would be upright so as to pass between the ribs of a quadruped. To shoot men, the arrowhead blade would be flat in order to pass between the ribs of a human being.]
Quote from: Patrick Waterson on August 18, 2015, 08:10:36 PM
What I wonder is why a culture would arrange to conduct its raids only near convenient pits into which the victims could be dumped en masse. The traditional European approach to enemy corpses seems to have been to leave them where they lay for the wolves and ravens.
This may indeed be the case but it would be hard to detect archaeologically. Burial pits are identifiable either in a geophysical survey or if you put a trench through one by accident. Even if we found a bone scatter over an area, they would likely be broken up (by animals, weather, later human activity like cultivation), so identifying trauma as cause of death would be harder.
Explanations based upon a sudden, severe climatic incident do not account for the absence of young women from the victims. It would be a strange flood that was gender biased. I hesitate to say it, but maybe there was some element of ritual in the slaughter where the losers were lined up and brained and then thrown in , perhaps in front of their defeated chief with him last to go? The leg breaking could be to prevent the captives from running away.
One is reminded of Tacitus description of the Suebi who raided around their home area to terrorise and cow other tribes and expand their lands, or the Zulu who regularly raided surrounding tribes for much the same purpose.
The idea that humans at this period were essentially peaceable worries me in that it smacks of archaeology with a political messagejust as much as theories which over emphasise the struggle of cultures with the toughest group rising to the top.
It certainly flies in the face of experience
Jim
Quote from: aligern on August 19, 2015, 08:05:56 AM
Explanations based upon a sudden, severe climatic incident do not account for the absence of young women from the victims. It would be a strange flood that was gender biased.
True, although one might infer that whoever did not end up in the pit survived the immediate occurrence, e.g. by being packed into the only available boat space. Young women of breeding age, perhaps with a few selected chaps, would be a high-priority survival category if the event were not wholly unexpected.
And if it did strike without warning, it may have caught the young women attending a mother goddess festival at a different location.
One could also speculate that the population may have been inherently gender-unbalanced on account of a high rate of deaths in childbirth, perhaps resulting from an outbreak of puerperal fever (http://www.livescience.com/3210-childbirth-natural-deadly.html), but that would be pure speculation.
Quote
The idea that humans at this period were essentially peaceable worries me in that it smacks of archaeology with a political message just as much as theories which over emphasise the struggle of cultures with the toughest group rising to the top.
And as Jim points out, it is hard to reconcile with known human behaviour.
Quote from: aligern on August 19, 2015, 08:05:56 AM
The idea that humans at this period were essentially peaceable worries me in that it smacks of archaeology with a political messagejust as much as theories which over emphasise the struggle of cultures with the toughest group rising to the top.
Having studied archaeology at the peak of the "peaceful co-existence" phase, I have some sympathy. It led to some strange theories - even stranger than flash floods while women were at a goddess festival because of an outbreak of childbed fever :) One of my favourites was fortification arose in the Neolithic because of marauding bands of wolves after the animals.
However, we should remember it was a reaction to an earlier paradigm in which prehistoric societies only interacted by conquering and subduing each other. It did throw more of a spotlight on other forms of cultural interaction.
Quote from: Erpingham on August 19, 2015, 12:06:07 PM
It did throw more of a spotlight on other forms of cultural interaction.
Some of which are coming to light here (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33963372).
One does wonder what the impact of farming was on the hunter gatherers after a while. In Both India and South Africa hnter gatherers survive, but they have been pushed out of the pkeasant liwland into deserts and forests. I am with Aristotle? who said or rather git the questioner to say that there will always be war because population increases (or climate change cuts the abilityof land to support the numbers upon it) and this drives communities to seize land from others. So at first the hunter gatherers live in harmhy with the agriculturalists, but eventually they are shouldered aside by the numbers of the sod busters. A stock herding lifestyle, by contrast, removes man from daily dependency upon garnering food and creates time for warfare and conquest of the agricultural peoples whose surplus can then be appropriated.
Roy
Was going to start a new post, but saw this one and figured it was very close to my subject . . .
Blurb in the paper yesterday about the discovery of 7000-year-old bones in ditch revealing massacre (torture and mutilation as well, apparently) of farmers in what is now Germany.
Report appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal and reference is made to site called Kilianstadten.
Reference is also made to a Linear Pottery culture. Readily admit to not be very familiar with this historical period, so I guess I better start doing some reading and research.
The blurb was sickening but also fascinating. Made me wonder if it's in our nature. Again, time for reading and research.
Chris
Quote from: aligern on August 19, 2015, 01:55:57 PM
A stock herding lifestyle, by contrast, removes man from daily dependency upon garnering food and creates time for warfare and conquest of the agricultural peoples whose surplus can then be appropriated.
Roy
Which is true, but an agricultural society creates a surplus which can be appropriated by 'aristocracy' and 'priest'
Both these groups have time to contemplate warfare as a way of hanging on to what they've got and increasing it
Jim
We may note that the really big Biblical civilisations (Egypt and Mesopotamia) were quintessentially agricultural.
The key to permanent settled populations actually seems to be cities or similar defendable localities which can also store significant amounts of produce. If not up to building a city, one could always have a go at creating a hill fort ...
Quote from: Jim Webster on August 19, 2015, 02:57:47 PM
Quote from: aligern on August 19, 2015, 01:55:57 PM
A stock herding lifestyle, by contrast, removes man from daily dependency upon garnering food and creates time for warfare and conquest of the agricultural peoples whose surplus can then be appropriated.
Roy
Which is true, but an agricultural society creates a surplus which can be appropriated by 'aristocracy' and 'priest'
Both these groups have time to contemplate warfare as a way of hanging on to what they've got and increasing it
Jim
I think we may be confusing what Roy meant by a herding society.
I am not sure whether Roy meant that herding allowed more war because it is a form of agriculture, in contrast to hunter gatherers?
Or did Roy mean that herding allowed more war, in contrast to crop farming?
Ultimately, the combination of surplus production and a stationary society will allow a crop farming society to out invest the more mobile societies.
Pretty hard to invest in mines and metalwork, roads and defensive works if you are busy walking to the next valley to pick berries.
It might not be better for individuals of that society, because - as Jim pointed to - heirarchy will emerge quickly, but you'll out populate them and squish (technical term) them.
Herding allows for more war than hunter gathering. It is the means of wealth production that is so often missed when people talk of the interaction between farmers and the pre existing populations.
However we can extend the comparison
Herding societies exist in a symbiotic situation with settled agricultural city dwellers. the herdsmen need to trade for goods. There are a coupke of key differences in that the very nature of an agricultural society tends to produce serfs and lords. Now I know there are exceptions such as the Roman Republic and that an agricultural Society can be organised for war, but I think it significant that the herding society so often ends up conquering and dominating its settled neighbours. If its not the stock breeding Society that dominates it can be hill people (often mixed agriculture but with a lot of animal management, or those of the settled society set to guard the frontiers.
I suppose a key advantage of the farmers is that they appropriate the land and more specifically access to water which the stockman needs and that , if you are operating transhumance stock breeding, then you are away from a site for half the year in which time the scratchers of the earth can move in, also walls are not really part of the herdsman's vocabulary, whereas they come naturally to city folk, hence the fortifications in Tunisia that channel and control the movements of flocks and their footloose human owners.
Its always easier to appropriate the carefully husbanded surplus of others than to do the backbreaking work yourself, whether that is done through tax ( by your own nobility) or by raiding by stockmen on their holidays.
Roy
If we classify herders as 'nomads' (e.g. Scythians, Turks, Mongols) then there is evident weight to Roy's observations. Such peoples are traditionally quite difficult for a settled opponent to conquer, in that the nomads can evade the traditional 'hit them where they live' approach by changing where they live.
Every wargamer knows the frustrations and dangers of taking on an opponent with a nomad army. The latter however tend not to shine on the tabletop against experienced opponents because herding them on to the board edges and then crushing them is a viable technique, unlike in real life.
Nomad empires tend to arise when a strong leader unites the clans and tribes (this being the exception rather than the norm) and descend
en masse on bordering civilisations, particularly if the latter are going through a troublesome period. Gibbon in
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire notes this tendency and exercises himself whether it could happen again in his day and age, concluding that it could not on account of the civilised world's twin advantages of fortifications and cannon.
In the absence of cannon, civilised, or at least settled, populations are left with fortifications as a means of coping with their unwelcome neighbours. Some civilisations utilised these on a grand scale.
If lacking fortifications per se, one can always try settlements with defendable buildings, e.g. at Catal Huyuk (http://www.catalhoyuk.com/history.html).
Quote from: Dangun on August 20, 2015, 04:50:32 AM
Ultimately, the combination of surplus production and a stationary society will allow a crop farming society to out invest the more mobile societies.
Over the millennia this has proven essentially true, in that crop farming societies now dominate the world. There have of course been many hiccups along the way, and an important part of the eventual triumph of the settled farmers has been that successful nomad conquerors (and about 50% of the globe, or at least of the non-icy continental parts thereof, has felt the tread of successful nomad conquerors) have tended to assimilate the culture of those they conquered and become more or less civilised in turn.
Going back, if I may, to the original discussion, what do we think Neolithic European warfare looked like? These massacre finds suggest something more deadly than the ritualised warfare practiced by some modern "primitive" tribes. Perhaps methods like pre-metal Amerindian warfare? Primary weapons would appear to be bows and hacking weapons (little mention of spears, or knives but this could be because they leave less skeletal trace). Any shields would be made of organic materials (bark, basketwork, leather) and unlikely to survive.
Are there any rules which might be particularly useful to represent warfare in the period? A skirmish set? Something colonial perhaps?
Quote from: Erpingham on August 20, 2015, 12:13:04 PM
Are there any rules which might be particularly useful to represent warfare in the period? A skirmish set? Something colonial perhaps?
You might try using or adapting Steve Barber's
Prehistoric Settlement (http://stevebarbermodels.com/) rules (find them with their associated miniatures and terrain pieces via the "figure ranges" link from the homepage, picking the 25mm option first, not the 28mm one - the site doesn't use individual page URLs for some reason). Although designed for the 50,000 to 10,000 BC period, loosely speaking, and concentrating predominantly on the actions of hunter-gatherer tribes and their conflicts, it's an entertaining, fast-paced game overall. It's being revamped currently, with the release of more "Ice-Age"-look figures.
Can't seem to find any useful reviews or summaries of the game online in a quick check today - not even on the Steve Barber site, though he has some very basic comments about it there. Main premise is you have to build your tribe and settlement and defend it against predatory creatures, before worrying too much about the folks in the neighbouring settlement, but all the while in a perpetual arms-race with them to achieve a better military force faster than they can, so you can eliminate said food-and-resource-source competition!
There are two expansion rule sets, "Savage Seas", which introduces boats, rafts, fishing as a new food source, and other watery aspects, and "Out of the Wilderness", which brings in magic/religion of sorts, fire (though this seems anachronistically late), additional troop types (slingers), the rudiments of agriculture (interestingly as part of the magic rules; I like the idea that such specialist knowledge can be considered "magical"), and other complexities, with suggestions for further expansion to creating pallisade-fortified villages, for example. It also brings in options for larger army-style warrior forces as a starting point for the first time in these rules.
Worth a look perhaps, as while not quite Neolithic-ready, with a little tweaking...
Quote from: aligern on August 20, 2015, 09:30:39 AM
Herding societies exist in a symbiotic situation with settled agricultural city dwellers. the herdsmen need to trade for goods... Its always easier to appropriate the carefully husbanded surplus of others than to do the backbreaking work yourself...
Possible in the short term, but in the long run, these are parasitic strategies, which are limited in their scalability.
The herder can't make his own weapon, and can't make war, unless there is a sedantary socitey to trade with.
So in the long run, he will settle himself, or be dominated.
Quite a long run, though. Arguably the last herder conquests were the Moghuls in India and the Manchu. That gives them a dominant role for all if our period.
Herdsmen do not leave much in the way of archaeology. I do wonder quite when they come into the picture vis a vis the hunter gatherers and the first farmers.
Roy
Quote from: aligern on August 21, 2015, 08:09:19 AM
I do wonder quite when they come into the picture vis a vis the hunter gatherers and the first farmers.
The Jared Diamond answer would probably be along the lines of some balance between the availability of domesticat-able mammals and domesticat-able breeds of high-carb grass e.g. wheat.
So in South America you get corn, south Asia you get the buffalo and rice, and in Australia you get... well nothing.
Quote from: Erpingham on August 20, 2015, 12:13:04 PM
Going back, if I may, to the original discussion, what do we think Neolithic European warfare looked like? These massacre finds suggest something more deadly than the ritualised warfare practiced by some modern "primitive" tribes.
Assuming they are in fact massacre finds, which I consider doubtful. Possibly a better guide would be 'Otzi', the archer discovered near the border of Italy and Austria some years ago. In addition to developing a 'curse legend' on account of most academics who worked on him dying soon afterwards, he was quite instructive in that he was an archer with a copper hatchet of early make and his quiver held a few shafts without arrowheads. He had an arrowhead in his left armpit and one of the arrows in his vicinity was broken near the fletchings, as if by a convulsive grip when 'Otzi' was hit in the armpit by a good shot from the other side (cutting an artery is apparently particularly painful).
The headless arrows (in the middle of a fight) might be indications of 'kills', on the basis that the arrowheads would detach in the wound. His hatchet seemed unblooded, an indication that he made no particular effort to finish off wounded opponents but only took arrow shafts (and presumably whatever else he fancied) from dead foes. He himself was abandoned unlooted after his demise, suggesting his side chased off its opponents but failed to retrieve everyone from the field - or rather the set of mountain ridges - and presumably posted him 'missing'. Or he was not greatly missed.
This suggests a fairly cautious, skirmishing approach to warfare as opposed to a
guerre a outrance. This approach is pretty much what we might expect of a hunter society, in which skills are high but manpower is limited.
So what happens when hunting gives way to farming? This will depend upon the social organisation of the farmers: if hill tribes scratching subsistence from unforgiving terrain, they will tend to raid in their 'free time'. Farmers in really good land seem to end up with cities, rulers and armies. Which pattern, if either, would the Neolithic Europeans have tended towards? We may note that by the time they became familiar to the classical world, they had both tribal societies and cities.
Quote
Perhaps methods like pre-metal Amerindian warfare? Primary weapons would appear to be bows and hacking weapons (little mention of spears, or knives but this could be because they leave less skeletal trace). Any shields would be made of organic materials (bark, basketwork, leather) and unlikely to survive.
The Crow Creek Massacre (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crow_Creek_massacre) is a 'Neolithic' (in terms of culture rather than timing) Amerindian massacre. Noteworthy is the clear record of atrocities left on the skeletons of the victims.
Quote from: aligern on August 21, 2015, 08:09:19 AM
Herdsmen do not leave much in the way of archaeology. I do wonder quite when they come into the picture vis a vis the hunter gatherers and the first farmers.
Pastoralists as such have probably existed about as long as agriculturalists, but the really significant sort militarily speaking is the horse nomad. They got started in the early last millennium BC as I understand it, and it doesn't take too long before the Cimmerians and Scythians turn up as the first horseback conquerors.
QuoteThe Crow Creek Massacre is a 'Neolithic' (in terms of culture rather than timing) Amerindian massacre. Noteworthy is the clear record of atrocities left on the skeletons of the victims.
Interesting but tells us very little about the nature of combat. For Amerindian I was thinking on the descriptions of warfare of people like the Tupi or Florida peoples, which feature a good deal of archery yet also close combat weapons like clubs.
The problem with using Otzi as an exemplar of neolithic warfare is there is only one of him. While there is a new Otzi theory every five minutes, mostly they consider him a victim or crime or feud rather than war. However, the idea that he pursued further than everyone else and killed by those he pursued is possible, as is the idea that his side were fleeing and he was the last straggler picked off. The body was covered quickly, so maybe worsening weather prevented either body recovery or looting. An interesting take.
Andreas, were there not chariot mobile pastoralists before the Cimmerian riders?
Aren.'t the peoples who drift int Sumeria abd Akkad and the Libyans and Numidians walking herdsmen?
Roy
Quote from: Erpingham on August 23, 2015, 10:01:50 AM
QuoteThe Crow Creek Massacre is a 'Neolithic' (in terms of culture rather than timing) Amerindian massacre. Noteworthy is the clear record of atrocities left on the skeletons of the victims.
Interesting but tells us very little about the nature of combat. For Amerindian I was thinking on the descriptions of warfare of people like the Tupi or Florida peoples, which feature a good deal of archery yet also close combat weapons like clubs.
The problem with using Otzi as an exemplar of neolithic warfare is there is only one of him. While there is a new Otzi theory every five minutes, mostly they consider him a victim or crime or feud rather than war. However, the idea that he pursued further than everyone else and killed by those he pursued is possible, as is the idea that his side were fleeing and he was the last straggler picked off. The body was covered quickly, so maybe worsening weather prevented either body recovery or looting. An interesting take.
And the problem with some of the theories is that they can as axiomatic that there was or was not war within that period :-[
Quote from: Jim Webster on August 23, 2015, 11:44:07 AM
And the problem with some of the theories is that they can as axiomatic that there was or was not war within that period :-[
Otzi is late Neolithic as he has a copper axe. I think most people would accept warfare then. See for example this little summary
http://www.archaeology.co.uk/articles/features/bloody-stone-age-war-in-the-neolithic.htm (http://www.archaeology.co.uk/articles/features/bloody-stone-age-war-in-the-neolithic.htm)
Quote from: Erpingham on August 23, 2015, 10:01:50 AM
QuoteThe Crow Creek Massacre is a 'Neolithic' (in terms of culture rather than timing) Amerindian massacre. Noteworthy is the clear record of atrocities left on the skeletons of the victims.
Interesting but tells us very little about the nature of combat. For Amerindian I was thinking on the descriptions of warfare of people like the Tupi or Florida peoples, which feature a good deal of archery yet also close combat weapons like clubs.
I am more familiar with the Sioux during the horse-riding Plains Indians period, which has obvious anomalies in that Neolithic types are not known to have ridden quadrupeds but is at least quite well documented. Typical warfare by the Sioux and their neighbours involved raiding villages to steal ponies with combat as an exciting incidental activity, usually involving a running fight in which many arrows were shot but few people hurt. Sometimes two tribes would face off against each other in formal battles but these also had a remarkably low loss rate on account of the tendency to put 'counting coup' above killing opponents and the difficulty of hitting fast-moving horsemen without volley shooting. Things became more interesting when an older warrior decided he had had enough of life and staked himself out, i.e. tied himself to a wooden stake and took up a hand weapon, as there was much prestige for killing such a man but only if this was achieved hand to hand.
All in all, Sioux warfare involved much excitement but comparatively few people getting hurt, with prestige rather than body count as the main aim of the game (body count never hurt but was not so easy to achieve).
Apaches were different. Apaches fought to kill, attacking from ambush and generally taking no prisoners. They also were one of the few tribes who usually fought on foot despite having horses available.
Tupi warfare seems to have been largely oriented towards taking home live captives for dinner, with preference given to the bravest and strongest, evidently in the belief (shared by certain West African tribes) that when such a man was consumed the essence of his strength and qualities was passed to the consumer (a consumer society meant something a bit different back then).
Quote from: aligern on August 23, 2015, 10:10:52 AM
Andreas, were there not chariot mobile pastoralists before the Cimmerian riders?
There were chariots out on the steppe quite early, but I'm not aware of evidence of their mass use in battle by non-settled societies. The Aryan conquest of India has been suggested as an example (ISTR Keegan does in
A History of Warfare), but the Aryans of the Vedas are hardly nomad herders, and we know nothing whatsoever of the specifics of the conquest.
QuoteAren.'t the peoples who drift int Sumeria abd Akkad and the Libyans and Numidians walking herdsmen?
They were, or at least some of them were, but I would argue they're not comparable with Scythians, Turks, or Mongols. In terms of their impact on civilization, they're more analogous to agriculturalist barbarians.
The Kassites then Andreas. The difficulty we have here is that the chariot mounted nomad leaves no record until he arrives at a city based society. Were not the Kassites a chariot aristocracy who worshipped the horse?
I confess complete ignorance of the Kassites' economic base before taking over Babylonia. Nor do I know whether they became charioteers before or after setting up shop in Babylon (tho whoever is behind the relevant DBMM lists evidently thought they had few chariots before settling there).
(I note tangentially that Drews in The Coming of the Greeks quotes with apparent disapproval a description of the Mitanni Aryans as pastoral migrants, but it's not clear what he thinks they did for a living when not taking over the Habur valley - given the context maybe he's only objecting to the migrant part.)
Looking up the entry on the Kassites in Benkowski and Millard's Dictionary of the Ancient Near East, I see they said Kassites had been present in Babylonia long before the Hittite sack and the subsequent establishment of the Kassite dynasty: the seeming implication being that it was more coup than invasion.
Sasson's (ed.) Civilizations of the Ancient Near East says much the same, adding that we simply don't know how Kassite kings ended up ruling. It does say they were pastoralists, at least early on (after the takeover at least some became "feudal" landlords).
The Kassites it is then
If "it" means a chariot-based nomad force of comparable mobility and capability to later horse nomads, I don't think we can presently know if the Kassites were it.
Quote from: Patrick Waterson on August 23, 2015, 02:02:39 PM
Quote from: Erpingham on August 23, 2015, 10:01:50 AM
QuoteThe Crow Creek Massacre is a 'Neolithic' (in terms of culture rather than timing) Amerindian massacre. Noteworthy is the clear record of atrocities left on the skeletons of the victims.
Interesting but tells us very little about the nature of combat. For Amerindian I was thinking on the descriptions of warfare of people like the Tupi or Florida peoples, which feature a good deal of archery yet also close combat weapons like clubs.
I am more familiar with the Sioux during the horse-riding Plains Indians period, which has obvious anomalies in that Neolithic types are not known to have ridden quadrupeds but is at least quite well documented.
For an excellent description of prehistoric warfare in the American Southwest see Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage, by Steven LeBlanc. $7 used hard cover from Amazon.
Dave Beatty