ABSTRACT
My brief in this chapter is to look at how archaeologists working within frameworks labelled postprocessual or interpretive have dealt with human violence and the ways in which they may have engaged with evolutionary archaeologies in relation to these matters. Here, at the outset, let me offer first-order approximations of answers to these questions: they don’t, and they haven’t. However, seeking to understand these conclusions may tell us something interesting about the community of interpretive archaeologists. I will seek to explain why there has been widespread ‘silence on violence’, examine the limited but increasing number of interesting exceptions and explore why engagement with evolutionary approaches remains virtually non-existent, rarely extending beyond more or less ritualistic denunciations of ‘sociobiological determinism’.
