Aboriginal Warfare in the Protohistoric Southeast: An Alternative Perspective

Abstract

Larson's hypothesis that southeastern warfare was instituted to increase the agricultural territories of demographically expanding Mississippian groups is not demonstrable for similar protohistoric chiefdoms in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Ethnohistorical data support an alternative perspective of warfare as a principal equilibrium-regulating institution through which cancellation of status deterioration, common in the peculiar ranked social structures of lower valley groups, might have been achieved.