ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the recent writings of nine writers on the anthropology of war: Andrew Vayda, Keith Otterbein, William Divale and Marvin Harris, Napoleon Chagnon, Robert Carneiro, Ronald Cohen, Raymond Kelly, and Brian Ferguson. They are being reviewed to simply show they contain at least the three components. While the literature on the anthropology of war has continued to increase since 1970, the number of distinct theories has diminished, diminished in the sense that many of the theories are no longer advanced and new distinct theories have not appeared. Andrew Vayda has been the primary proponent of ecological theories of warfare, his first publication on the subject appearing in 1961. He argues that a culture suffering from overpopulation will expand into unoccupied lands or will occupy land of militarily weaker neighbors. The key to understanding Napoleon Chagnon's theory of warfare is to examine the changes that have taken place in his writings over the past 20 years.
