ABSTRACT
In his watershed volume War Before Civilization (1996), Lawrence Keeley makes a strong case for researchers to be open to the likelihood that warfare was just as significant for smaller-scale societies of the prehistoric past as it is for people living in a modern world dominated by nation-states. He also discusses the fragile nature of peace. Peace may have the appearance of being fragile, but that is only if one starts from the assumption that some form of absolute peace is the norm, and that peace is merely the absence of conflict. Additionally, peace is a relative term, dependent on the kind of peace one is trying to define. Anthropologist Paul Roscoe notes an oddity in how many anthropologists approach war and peace, often phrasing them in binary terms, "as though communities are either at war or at peace." Peace is not a natural condition for humans, but is socially constructed and maintained.
