War food and structural violence in the Mississippian central Illinois valley

Abstract

Archaeological research in the Late Prehistoric Eastern Woodlands has revealed situations where the intensity of intergroup violence resulted in the abandonment of homesteads, villages, and even entire regions (Cobb and Butler 2002; King 2003; Morse and Morse 1983; O’Brien 2001; Price and Griffin 1979). Palisade walls, catastrophically burned villages, and violence-related skeletal trauma are the most obvious archaeological indicators of these ancient hostilities. And although such evidence informs us about the scale and intensity of these conflicts, it tells us little about what it was like for Native American groups to live with war on a daily basis. Did chronic warfare compromise or constrain subsistence pursuits and other basic practices related to the social and economic reproduction of households and communities? Did such constraints have an impact on health or food security?.