Ritual warfare

Short description: State of continual or frequent warfare

Error creating thumbnail: An armed woman of the Mursi tribe of Ethiopia The percentages of male deaths caused by war in eight tribal societies. (Lawrence H. Keeley, Archeologist, War Before Civilization) Part of a series on

War

History

* Prehistoric
* Ancient
* Post-classical

* Early modern

* Late modern
* industrial
* fourth-gen

Battlespace

* Air
* Cyber
* Information
* Space

* Land

* Cold-region
* Desert
* Jungle
* Mountain
* Urban

* Sea

* Amphibious
* Blue
* Brown
* Green
* Surface
* Underwater

Weapons

* Armor
* Artillery
* Biological
* Cavalry
* Chemical
* Conventional
* Cyber
* Denial
* Disinformation
* Electronic
* Infantry
* Lawfare
* Music
* Nuclear
* Psychological
* Unconventional
* Refugees as weapons

Tactics

* Aerial
* Battle
* Cavalry
* Charge
* Counterattack
* Counter-insurgency
* Cover
* Defeat in detail
* Foxhole
* Guerrilla
* Morale
* Rapid dominance
* Siege
* Swarming
* Tactical objective
* Target saturation
* Trench
* Withdrawal

Operational

* Blitzkrieg
* Deep operation
* Maneuver
* Operational manoeuvre group

Strategy

* Attrition
* Defence in depth
* Counter-offensive
* Fabian
* Mosaic
* Deception
* Defensive
* Goal
* Naval
* Offensive
* Scorched earth

Grand strategy

* Containment
* Economic
* Limited
* Science
* Philosophy
* Political
* Religious
* Strategic
* Technology
* Theater
* Theory
* Total war

Organization

* Command and control
* Doctrine
* Engineers
* Intelligence
* Ranks
* Technology and equipment

Personnel

* Military recruitment
* Conscription
* Recruit training
* Military specialism
* Women in the military
* Children in the military
* Transgender people and military service
* Sexual harassment in the military
* Conscientious objection
* Counter recruitment

Logistics

* Military–industrial complex
* Arms industry
* Materiel
* Supply chain management

Related

* Demilitarisation
* Asymmetric warfare
* Broken-Backed War Theory
* Court-martial
* Cold war
* Deterrence theory
* Horses in warfare
* Irregular warfare
* Law of war
* Mercenary
* Military campaign
* Military operation
* Network-centric warfare
* Operations research
* Principles of war
* Proxy war
* Security dilemma
* Tripwire force
* War crime
* War film
* War game
* War novel
* Wartime sexual violence
* Women in war
* World war
* Colonial war
* Endemic warfare
* Lanchester's laws

Lists

* Battles
* Military occupations
* Military tactics
* Operations
* Sieges
* War crimes
* Wars
* Weapons
* Writers

* v
* t
* e

Ritual warfare (sometimes called endemic warfare) is a state of continual or frequent warfare, such as is found in (but not limited to) some tribal societies.

## Contents

* 1 Description
* 2 Examples
* 3 See also
* 4 References
* 5 Further reading
* 6 External links

## Description

Ritual fighting (or ritual battle or ritual warfare) permits the display of courage, masculinity, and the expression of emotion while resulting in relatively few wounds and even fewer deaths. Thus such a practice can be viewed as a form of conflict-resolution and/or as a psycho-social exercise. Native Americans often engaged in this activity, but the frequency of warfare in most hunter-gatherer cultures is a matter of dispute.[1]

## Examples

Warfare is known to every tribal society, but some societies developed a particular emphasis of warrior culture. Historical examples include the Nuer of South Sudan,[2] the Maasai of East Africa,[3] the Zulu of southeastern Africa,[3] the Sea Dayaks of Borneo,[3] the Naga of Northeast India and Myanmar, the Māori of New Zealand, the Dugum Dani of Papua,[2] the Araucanians of Patagonia,[3] and the Yanomami (dubbed "the Fierce People") of the Amazon.[2] The culture of inter-tribal warfare has long been present in New Guinea.[1][4]

Communal societies are well capable of escalation to all-out wars of annihilation between tribes. Thus, in Amazonas, there was perpetual animosity between the neighboring tribes of the Jívaro. A fundamental difference between wars enacted within the same tribe and against neighboring tribes is such that "wars between different tribes are in principle wars of extermination".[5]

It is documented that large war parties of the Bororo, Kayapo, Munduruku, Guaraní and Tupi people conducted long-distance raids across the interior of Brazil. Most Bororo groups were continually at war with their neighbors.[6] In the early 20th century, thirty indigenous tribes in the Amazon basin were listed as peaceful and eighty-three were specifically described as warlike.[3]

The Yanomami of Amazonas traditionally practiced a system of escalation of violence in several discrete stages. The chest-pounding duel, the side-slapping duel, the club fight, and the spear-throwing fight. Further escalation results in raiding parties with the purpose of killing at least one member of the hostile faction. Finally, the highest stage of escalation is Nomohoni or all-out massacres brought about by treachery.

Similar customs were known to the Dugum Dani and the Chimbu of New Guinea, the Nuer of Sudan and the North American Plains Indians. Among the Chimbu and the Dugum Dani, pig theft was the most common cause of conflict, even more frequent than abduction of women, while among the Yanomamö, the most frequent initial cause of warfare was accusations of sorcery. Warfare serves the function of easing intra-group tensions and has aspects of a game, or "overenthusiastic football".[7] Especially Dugum Dani "battles" have a conspicuous element of play, with one documented instance of a battle interrupted when both sides were distracted by throwing stones at a passing cuckoo dove.[8]

## See also

* Captives in American Indian Wars
* Communal violence
* Flower war
* Irregular warfare
* Mock combat
* Napoleon Chagnon
* Prehistoric warfare
* Religion and violence
* Ethnic violence in Papua New Guinea
* Sudanese nomadic conflicts
* Ethnic violence in South Sudan
* Oromo–Somali clashes
* Tinku
* War dance

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "The Absence of War". open Democracy. 21 May 2003. http://www.opendemocracy.net/ecology/article_1230.jsp.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Diamond, Jared (2012). The world until yesterday : what can we learn from traditional societies?. New York: Viking. pp. 79–129. ISBN 978-0-670-02481-0. https://archive.org/details/worlduntilyester00diam_0/page/79.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Davie, Maurice R. (1929). The Evolution of War: A Study of Its Role in Early Societies. Yale University Press. pp. 251-262. ISBN 9780486162218. https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/lUPTc-JImcUC?hl=&gbpv=1.
4. ↑ "Papua New Guinea massacre of women and children highlights poor policing, gun influx". ABC News. 11 July 2019. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-10/png-tribal-massacre-poor-policing-weapons-influx-fuel-violence/11297136.
5. ↑ Karsten, Rafael (1923). Blood revenge, war, and victory feasts among the Jibaro Indians of eastern Ecuador. Kessinger Publishing. p. 277. ISBN 978-1-4179-3181-1.
6. ↑ Heckenberger, Michael (2005). The Ecology of Power: Culture, Place, and Personhood in the Southern Amazon, A.D. 1000-2000. 2005. pp. 139-141. ISBN 9780415945998. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Ecology_of_Power/hAKratAxR18C?hl.
7. ↑ Orme, Bryony (1981). Anthropology for Archaeologists. Cornell University Press. p. 196. ISBN 978-0-8014-1398-8.
8. ↑ Heider, Karl (1970). The Dugum Dani. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. p. 111. ISBN 978-0-202-01039-7.

## Further reading

* Zimmerman, L. The Crow Creek Site Massacre: A Preliminary Report, US Army Corps of Engineers, Omaha District, 1981.
* Chagnon, N. The Yanomamo, Holt, Rinehart & Winston,1983.
* Keeley, Lawrence. War Before Civilization, Oxford University Press, 1996.
* Pauketat, Timothy R. North American Archaeology 2005\. Blackwell Publishing.
* Wade, Nicholas. Before the Dawn, Penguin: New York 2006.
* S. A. LeBlanc, Prehistoric Warfare in the American Southwest, University of Utah Press (1999).
* Guy Halsall, 'Anthropology and the Study of Pre-Conquest Warfare and Society: The Ritual War in Anglo-Saxon England' in *Hawkes (ed.), Weapons and Warfare in Anglo-Saxon England (1989), 155–177.
* Diamond, Jared. The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?, Viking. New York, 2012. pp. 79–129

## External links

* Haida Warfare
* Tribal Warfare and Blood Revenge
* The Crow Creek Massacre
* Tribal warfare kills nine in Indonesia's Papua

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