Violence, Conflict and Warfare, The Relationship with the Socio-Political Complexity

Violence, Conflict and warfare are almost inevitably connected to the human societies and its principal roots are really different. There is no doubt that studying on such an important phenomenon in the ancient world adds a different dimension to our understanding of the causes and role of warfare in the past and also in present, and future. This paper will try to introduce the new approach of conflict archaeology, applied methods and some case studies in the ancient world. Up until now archaeologists mostly studied weaponry and their technologies and rarely studies violence and warfare in the social context. However, it is assumed there is a relationship between warfare and social complexity. Thus, archaeologists are needed to interpret conflict and warfare from the new perspective. This article will present the required methodologies for the study of warfare and its role on sociopolitical complexity. Furthermore, it would be argued that by researching on these new anthropological topics we can propose new directions and more involved archaeological insights in modern societies. For this, some archaeological evidence in Elamite and Assyrian warfare have been considered as well. Assyrian material cultures would provide a better understanding for the degree of violence, political complexities, arm and armies. As a result, war and warfare could be the sign of emergence of complexities in the politic, military, economic and social levels of the society.