ABSTRACT
The purpose of the present study is to describe evidence for interpersonal violence found within a prehistoric cemetery population. This evidence, in the form of cranial trauma, adds time depth to the types of interpersonal conflict related by Arthur C. Parker quotation. Further, because of the unusual distribution of injuries by sex and age, the evidence from the Late Woodland site of Riviere aux Vase in Michigan is interpreted as demonstrating the role of women as frequent victims of this interpersonal violence. Warfare and raiding were ubiquitous in Native American groups as first contacted and described by Europeans. Throughout the northeast and Great Lakes, and into the southeastern United States indigenous peoples participated in long-term, ongoing interactions punctuated by killing and abduction. The addition of prehistoric evidence from archaeology to the ethnohistoric and ethnographic descriptions of intergroup violence provides a powerful explanatory device for interpreting data such as those from Riviere aux Vase.
