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The archaeologies of food and warfare have independently developed
over the past several decades. This volume aims to provide concrete
linkages between these research topics through the examination of
case studies worldwide. Topics considered within the book include:
the impacts of warfare on the daily food quest, warfare and
nutritional health, ritual foodways and violence, the provisioning
of warriors and armies, status-based changes in diet during times
of war, logistical constraints on military campaigns, and violent
competition over subsistence resources. The diversity of
perspectives included in this volume may be a product of new ways
of conceptualizing violence-not simply as an isolated component of
a society, nor as an attribute of a particular societal type-but
instead as a transformative process that is lived and irrevocably
alters social, economic, and political organization and
relationships. This book highlights this transformative process by
presenting a cross-cultural perspective on the connection between
war and food through the inclusion of case studies from several
continents.
The archaeologies of food and warfare have independently developed
over the past several decades. This volume aims to provide concrete
linkages between these research topics through the examination of
case studies worldwide. Topics considered within the book include:
the impacts of warfare on the daily food quest, warfare and
nutritional health, ritual foodways and violence, the provisioning
of warriors and armies, status-based changes in diet during times
of war, logistical constraints on military campaigns, and violent
competition over subsistence resources. The diversity of
perspectives included in this volume may be a product of new ways
of conceptualizing violence-not simply as an isolated component of
a society, nor as an attribute of a particular societal type-but
instead as a transformative process that is lived and irrevocably
alters social, economic, and political organization and
relationships. This book highlights this transformative process by
presenting a cross-cultural perspective on the connection between
war and food through the inclusion of case studies from several
continents.
The Olmec who anciently inhabited Mexico's southern Gulf Coast
organized their once-egalitarian society into chiefdoms during the
Formative period (1400 BC to AD 300). This increase in political
complexity coincided with the development of village agriculture,
which has led scholars to theorize that agricultural surpluses gave
aspiring Olmec leaders control over vital resources and thus a
power base on which to build authority and exact tribute. In this
book, Amber VanDerwarker conducts the first multidisciplinary
analysis of subsistence patterns at two Olmec settlements to offer
a fuller understanding of how the development of political
complexity was tied to both agricultural practices and
environmental factors. She uses plant and animal remains, as well
as isotopic data, to trace the intensification of maize agriculture
during the Late Formative period. She also examines how volcanic
eruptions in the region affected subsistence practices and
settlement patterns. Through these multiple sets of data,
VanDerwarker presents convincing evidence that Olmec and epi-Olmec
lifeways of farming, hunting, and fishing were driven by both
political and environmental pressures and that the rise of
institutionalized leadership must be understood within the
ecological context in which it occurred.
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