Prehistoric warfare amongst LBK farmers

[Jim Webster]

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

[Patrick Waterson]

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 ...

[Dangun]

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.

[aligern]

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

[Patrick Waterson]

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.

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.

[Erpingham]

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?

[Sharur]

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 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...

[Dangun]

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.

[aligern]

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

[Dangun]

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.

[Patrick Waterson]

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.

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 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.

[Andreas Johansson]

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.

[Erpingham]

The 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.

[aligern]

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

[Jim Webster]

The 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