War and the Food Quest in Small-Scale Societies: Settlement-Pattern Formation in Contact-Era New Guinea

Roscoe, Paul

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-18506-4_2

Cited by 8 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Refugees from conflict and war often try to escape to the relative safety afforded by settlements occupying defensive positions, such as hill-tops, or settlements that are protected by artificial defenses, such as moats and walls. Such population migration to protected places can, then, result in some parts of the landscape becoming depopulated, while others are overpopulated, creating a more uneven distribution of people compared to the situation without conflict (Roscoe 2016;Arkush 2018). Population density may then increase beyond an epidemiological threshold in some locations, triggering the outbreak of diseases.…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic) groups in Europe. Similarly, "buffer zones" among groups were linked to the presence of conflicts and warfare among indigenous groups in Amazonia and the Andes (Arkush and Tung 2013;DeBoer 1981), while the possibility of violent conflicts has been linked to settlement patterns in New Guinea (Roscoe 2016). Shift of settlements to defensive positions, and a rapid population decline were linked to increasing violent conflict during the decline of Classic Maya polities in the Petexbatun region (Dunning and O'Mansky 2004).…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Landscape of Fear: Indirect effects of conflict can account for large-scale population declines in non-state societies

Kondor¹,

Bennett²,

Gronenborn³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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The impact of inter-group conflict (warfare) on large-scale population declines has long been debated, especially for prehistoric or non-state societies. In this work, we consider that beyond direct battle casualties, which are typically limited, conflicts can also create a “landscape of fear” in which many non-combatants near theaters of conflict abandon their homes and migrate away. This migration has two impacts: It causes population decline in the abandoned regions and increased population density in better protected areas that are targeted by refugees. This higher density, in turn, can place additional stress on local supplies, potentially leading to reduced fertility and increased mortality due to malnutrition and disease. Using both an analytic and agent-based model we investigate the impact of these interactions on population dynamics of small-scale societies. We demonstrate that these indirect effects of conflict are sufficient, even in the absence of combatant casualties, to produce substantial, long-term population boom-and-bust patterns. In particular, our agent-based model is able to account for the large-scale spatial and temporal boom-and-bust patterns observed in radiocarbon data from mid-Holocene Europe. We also demonstrate that greater availability of defensible locations, by acting to protect and maintain the supply of combatants, increases the permanence of the landscape of fear and likelihood of endemic warfare.

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Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%