Archaeologists have highlighted that via landscape, as physical and meaningful places, one can understand many cultural factors including power relations and socioeconomics (David and Thomas, Handbook of Landscape Archaeology, 2008). In Global Perspectives on Landscapes of Warfare Hugo Ikehara-Tsukayama and Juan Carlos Vargas Ruiz set forth the project of examining ‘how landscapes have been appropriated and modified by communities at war’ – with war defined as ‘the exchange of violence between social groups’ (p. 7). The chapters in the edited volume engage in this endeavour by providing case studies from a variety of contexts that include South America and Eurasia. As noted by the editors, one of the strengths of their book is the inclusion of case studies that are not often discussed by researchers based in the United States. Thematically, every chapter examines fortifications (or the potential thereof) and situates these features within a broader regional perspective. Most of the authors utilise ArcGIS spatial tools in their analysis.
The initial case studies are translated works by Russian researchers that are relatively new to Anglophone audiences. Viktor Borzunov convincingly argues to have found the northernmost (in terms of latitude) Stone Age fortifications to support the claim that war is not restricted to farming communities in the Russian Taiga and may have been a local development (as opposed to diffusing from elsewhere). In contrast, Igor Chechushkov utilises GIS spatial modelling to assess wind patterns, visibility and accessibility at sites located in the Sintashta-Petrovka region, a border area between Russia and Kazakhstan. His modelling reveals that on the harsh, windswept steppes, communities were often located in places that sheltered them from local weather. Consequently, many sites were not located on elevated terrain, which Chechushkov uses to argue that many settlements in Sintashta-Petrovka region were not fortified. However, living on the pinnacles of generally level terrain also makes one more visible and a potential target. The landscape images provided by Chechushkov (p. 64) suggest that being visible could potentially offset the tactical advantage afforded by relatively minor or gradual altitude differences out on the steppe. Perhaps, the people of Sintashta-Petrovka protected themselves by utilising concealment (and shelter from the elements) provided by low-lying terrain.
In Chapters 4–7, the authors examine how fortifications are distributed across and/or define regions in East Asia and Mesopotamia. James Williams utilises Chinese national soil data and other geospatial information to model site clusters, soil productivity and boundary distances to ‘disprove’ that ‘increasing interpolity conflict … conflict over resources’ and ‘population movement from other cultures’ explain how Longshan fortifications were distributed across the central Henan Province of China (pp. 96–7). Takehito Matsugi utilises the scale, form and interred assemblages from Japanese burial mounds to track the rise of chiefs during the transition from the Yayoi (2950–1700 BP) to the Kofun (1700–1350) periods. Nam Kim and Russell Quick examine the founding of the monumental, fortified community of Co Loa, Vietnam, and the associated polity that goes by the same name. They argue that the scale of Co Loa's martial architecture may have been strongly influenced by threats from a newly consolidated imperial China (i.e. post-Warring States period). Yet Kim and Quick are careful to highlight that fortifications can have many functions, including signifying status, and that ‘[m]ilitary use does not preclude, of course, other possible functions …’ (p. 134). In the final Asian case study, Tiffany Earley-Spadoni provides a fascinating account of the fortified Royal Road network of Achaemenid Persia. She highlights the difficulties of communicating with fire signals and how royal officials, local leaders and garrisons were surveilling one another and the road network.
The remaining case studies cover more familiar material, in terms of Anglophone scholarship, such as Celtic fortifications in France (see Chapter 8) that were built to protect communities in a rich mining area and later amplified in response to the Roman threat. Chapters 9–12 focus on the history of conflict among Indigenous groups of the Americas. Kerry Nichols argues that the widespread use of the bow-and-arrow led to the formation of regional alliances and placing of settlements on elevated terrain in the Lower Missouri river valley. She utilises ArcGIS to compare Late Woodland to Early Mississippian period sites in her study region, which reveals increasing site intervisibility over time. The remaining authors present results of their regional settlement pattern analysis to examine potential evidence for war in South American contexts. Vargas Ruiz finds inconclusive archaeological evidence for war in the Catanga region of Colombia, which is interesting given the wealth of colonial era records noting warfare in this part of South America. Ikehara-Tsukayama and Lauren Kohut highlight in their chapters how the breakdown of imperial or hegemonic states led to the widespread construction of fortifications and the formation of alliance clusters in the Nepeña and Colca valleys of Peru respectively.
In the final chapter, Elizabeth Arkush highlights how the analysis of the archaeological record is subject to equifinality. For example, how can archaeologists distinguish between a wall that functioned as a property boundary, an elevated walkway, or a fortification? First, it is important to consider Kim and Quick's analysis that reveals how fortifications can have multiple, at times overlapping, functions and meanings during their life history. To parse out a martial function from a complex web of relationships, Arkush argues that archaeologists need a middle-range theory of war and defence. This is an interesting proposal, though one that would have to be further unpacked due to the varying interpretations of what is meant by middle-range theory (e.g. Arnold, ‘Back to Basics: The Middle-Range Program as Pragmatic Archaeology’, in Essential Tensions in Archaeological Method and Theory, 2003; Johnson, Archaeological Theory, 2010). Yet she does highlight that a key element of her proposal is the consideration of what warfare should look like in a specific context. I agree and suggest that greater engagement with military history would be useful in this regard.
In summary, Ikehara-Tsukayama and Vargas Ruiz muster a diverse set of case studies that will stimulate debate on past warfare in different parts of the globe. My major critique of the book is the poor copyediting that has resulted in recurring typographical errors.
