Latin American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence

This groundbreaking multidisciplinary book presents significant essays on historical indigenous violence in Latin America from Tierra del Fuego to central Mexico. Concerned by what they see as a dangerous anti-scholarly "revisionist" movement--one that seeks to portray pre-Columbian Latin America as a "lost paradise" in which native peoples lived harmoniously together--the editors convened an international symposium at which leading anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, and ethnographers met to set the record straight. This volume, which results from the symposium, collects twelve contributions from sixteen contributors, all of whom are scholars at the forefront of their fields of study. All of the chapters advance our knowledge of the causes, extent, and consequences of indigenous violence--including ritualized violence--in Latin America. Each major historical/cultural group in Latin America is addressed by at least one contributor. Incorporating the results of dozens of years of research, this volume documents evidence of warfare, violent conflict, and human sacrifice from the fifteenth century to the twentieth, including incidents that occurred before European contact. Together the chapters present a convincing argument that bloodshed and killing have been woven into the fabric of life in Latin America since remote antiquity. For the first time, expert subject-area work on indigenous violence--archaeological, osteological, ethnographic, historical, and forensic--has been assembled in one volume. Much of this work has heretofore been dispersed across various countries and languages. With its collection into one English-language volume, all future writers--regardless of theirdiscipline or point of view--will be required to consult these findings.Chacon, Richard J. is the author of 'Latin American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780816525270 and ISBN 0816525277.