Warfare and Society: archaeological and social anthropological perspectives

Abstract

The present book deals with the interrelationship between society and war seen through the analytical eyes of anthropologists and archaeologists. The opening quote – spoken by an informant to Torsten Kolind and published in his thesis about discursive practices in Bosnia just after the war in 1992-95 – captures the problems we face when we study war. Archaeologists and anthropologists alike rarely possess war experiences of their own: we study past and present wars, but remain total outsiders who depend on numerous and complex discursive layers – material, written, and spoken – to bring us insight on this subject, so demanding and so necessary to deal with.