Guerra, parentesco y cambio social en las sociedades sin Estado del Valle del Nilo prehistórico

Abstract

Warfare has been recognized as an almost universal element in non-State societies all over the world and throughout the ages. Such a feature can be explained in terms of an inherent political structure: the self-identification of the kinship group by means of its contrast with the Other in war, and the refection of the emergence of an autonomous political power as a premise for the survival of the community itself. This may also connect warfare to the emergence of an institutionalized leadership, when the warrior leader is successful in keeping his prestige in peaceful times. In the Nile Valley, the archaeological record allow us to demostrate the preponderance of warfare in the prehistoric period and its relation with emergent social leadership. This evidence leads us to question the traditional hypothesis about the relatively peaceful nature of prehistoric Nile Valley societies and the concomitant consensual hypothesis on the emergence of Nilotic chiefdoms, and allows us to suggest an alternative explanation on how social leadership arose in a context of recurrent warfare in the Nile valley.