INTRODUCTION: SOME KEYS TO DEFINE AND INVESTIGATE ‘VIOLENCE’Top

The role of violence in human societies is an issue of permanent interest. In Western academic institutions, this interest has increased during recent decades possibly as a result of (a) the outbreak of new, bloody and geographically close military conflicts and, (b) the recent debates concerning forms of violence that are tolerated institutionally, scarcely problematized or even socially unnoticed to date (i.e., male violence against women, mobbing, gentrification, grooming and bullying). Prehistoric archaeology has shared this concern and, given its chronological coverage, has been involved in debates about the controversial ‘origins’ of aggressive human behaviour, violence in general, cannibalism, war, warriors, heroes, soldiers and armies. As a consequence, the reassessment of archaeological objects and contexts linked to armed conflicts[1], as well as new osteological analysis focused on the diagnosis of trauma caused by physical aggressions, has been undertaken. Single-case studies and general synthesis have reviewed and assessed the first evidences related to aggressions between humans, from the early episodes dating back to the Palaeolithic, to the wars and military conquests within the context of the first civilizations[2].

However, like any scientific discipline seeking to push forward the knowledge of human violence, archaeology must define which criteria serve to identify specific facts as related to ‘violence’. Dodging this theoretical task or taking for granted that the definition of ‘violence’ is common sense or widely shared, might open the doors of ambiguity and confusion and, hence, lead to sterile debates. Thus, it is crucial to define the meaning of ‘violence’ and the subsequent research steps linking concept and facts.

The starting point of any research on violence is the ability to supply documentary evidence of harm/damage, whether at an individual or group level (Lull et al., 2015). This identification helps to distinguish the ‘suffering subject’ or ‘victim’. Without documented harm/damage, there is no reason to invoke the category ‘violence’ to describe a given human relationship. Although ultimately all damage is or ends up being physical, we usually distinguish between psychological and physical violence. In this latter case, the denotative traits are different kinds of stigmas (traumas, injuries, destruction), often directly and unambiguously attested. Following this direct association, a further connection with the material means and the agents that caused the stigmas might be stated objectively (Lull et al., 2006). The category for ‘aggressor’ could then arise.

From an epistemological point of view, the investigation of psychological damage is more difficult. While physical damage can be unequivocally inferred in each of its particular appearances, psychological damage can come to be the cumulative result of actions or circumstances that, taken separately, may seem harmless or ambiguous. In these cases, the relationships finally causing damage would go unnoticed to the observer. Under other more favourable conditions, psychological damages are suggested as a hypothesis, after an inference process from indirect elements. The investigation would therefore leave more room for uncertainty.

With greater or fewer empirical difficulties, if the investigation is able to certify physical and/or psychological damage, and connect it to specific material means and to human promoters, it would be correct to classify a given social relationship under the label ‘violence’. Underlining the ontological priority of attesting damage leads to two key epistemological consequences:

1. Identifying certain damage and, therefore, a victim, must be the first aim of the investigation. The next step will be to identify the agent responsible for the damage, that is, the entity called ‘aggressor’.
2. ‘Victim’ and ‘aggressor’ will be recognisable entities regardless of the hypothetical conscious consideration of their protagonists about their respective roles. ‘Victim’ and ‘aggressor’ are the result of an inferential process based on empirical observations, not on the conscious statements of the subjects involved in the facts; in other words, subjective (self)awareness is not the main research requirement.

I have just pointed out that the identification of damages, of the material means directly linked to them and of the human promoters serves to attest a violent relationship. If this relationship maintains a constant directionality over time, it could be labelled as ‘violence without response’, with unawareness, at least from the promoter’s perspective, as, for example, has happened for millennia with what we now call ‘male violence against women’. However, if the victim is actively confronting their identified aggressor, a conflict is unleashed (Lull et al., 2006). In both cases, it is expected that empirical research should detail their rhythms, frequency and intensity.

The connections between physical and psychological violence are complex. Physical violence has an effective dimension, because its episodes leave tangible evidence of harmful effects (destruction of settlements, victims) and of the means that produced them (weapons). In addition, its occurrences are rarely silent and invisible, but are usually noticed, echoed to groups other than those who witnessed them and remembered for a long time in the oral and material memory. In other words, effective physical violence also fosters an affective dimension, in the sense of subjective affectation. Frequently, the development of the affective dimension of violence resembles a performance, in which a large audience watches the real suffering of other people, creating an object for ideology and alienation; for waking up consciences or for silencing them; for collective celebration or frustration. Considering this social fact, it is worth asking, dialectically, which other effects, in turn, can these affectations help to build. Further exploring the relationship between public, overtly physical violence, psychological violence and long-term and large-scale social control in the framework of class-divided societies will be the main aim of the following pages.

VIOLENCE AND CLASS SOCIETIESTop

The development of class societies with State political structures, also called ‘civilizations’, is one of the most relevant milestones in the history of humankind. Prehistoric archaeology has shown that these societies were not pioneering in the exercise of violence, but instead that violence in civilizations has specific goals and left behind more material, often unambiguous traces. One such goal was the maintenance of economic exploitation, sanctioned by the hereditary transmission of private property. The decisive instrument for this, although not necessarily the only one, was and is the activity of armed groups specialized in the exercise of physical violence (be it ‘army’, ‘police’ or similar). Furthermore, it is often noticed that the psychological dimension of violence is now conveyed through new forms of social gatherings, communication and exclusion promoted and/or monitored by specialized personnel acting on behalf of institutions (law and courts, religion and cults, official celebrations and remembrances).

Most of the research on violence in the so-called ‘ancient civilizations’ (or ‘pristine’ and ‘early States’) refer to open clashes labelled as ‘war’. The sides involved are usually conceived as unitary social subjects, struggling to achieve their aims: whether survival under the pressure of natural and social selection (biological-adaptive interpretations), or the desire for power and dominance by leaders, ruling classes or entire peoples (approaches that stress psychological and political motivations in explaining human behaviour). In contrast, research on violent acts or processes within these collective subjects is rare. The little attention to internal violence invites us to decide whether the investigation suffers from a functionalist and organicist bias that overlooks evidence of internal confrontations, or those prehistoric and ancient societies were so integrated that they managed to prevent the conflict within.

The theory that I seek to develop is that physical violence, in its ‘structural’ or ‘objective’ form (see below), is an inherent part of class societies, “but that the consolidation, maintenance and expansion of these societies depended on the affectation caused by certain forms of lethal public and remembered violence”. These forms of violence are globally documented and have two closely related components:

• a) Occurrences of physical violence with lethal consequences, promoted or sponsored by power/government centres.
• b) Extensive social communication of the development and effects of these occurrences.

Most of these social practices could be generically called ‘executions’[3]. This term is usually understood from a legal point of view, referring to a form of extreme punishment for those who have seriously transgressed the dominant order. Nevertheless, practices known as ‘human sacrifices’ could also be included under the same label. Regardless of whether or not religious or cultural motivations are invoked, ‘human sacrifices’ share with law-mediated executions the fact that both are overtly promoted by the dominant power. The key public nature of ‘human sacrifices’ places them at the centre of interest of the political issues addressed in this paper. In fact, recent research on a large sample of traditional societies in Australia and Oceania (Watts et al., 2016) has shown that human sacrifice during ritualized practices is significantly linked to the consolidation of stratified societies. A subset of these practices, those taking place during the funeral of certain preeminent personalities, have also been closely linked to the acquisition or maintenance of political power by the ruling classes (Childe, 1945; Testart, 2004; Albert and Midant-Reynes, 2005).

Having said that, it is one thing to detect a close relationship pattern between executions and the consolidation of social stratification, and it is another to find an explanation for this association. To explore this explanatory path, an analysis of the sociological components involved in public executions is needed, aimed at exploring the core relationships between violence and other dimensions of social life in the context of civilizations.

DEFINING CIVILIZED SOCIAL LIFETop

To further explore the possibility that public violence might exceed a strictly coercive effect requires basic knowledge of the society in which it occurred. Broadly speaking, class societies, whether with a State (civilizations) or in transition to Statehood, show common economic and political traits:

• a) Highly developed division of labour. Most of the working population perform full-time specialized tasks. The general context is fully sedentary, based on a solid farming and animal husbandry economy. In addition, artefactual production comprises multiple branches (pottery, metallurgy, lithic production, textiles, etc.) taking place in stable workshops. Hence, the satisfaction of most of the basic needs of specialized labour groups depended on a centralized redistributive system controlled by a sector of specialized bureaucrats-rulers.
• b) Sharp asymmetries in the distribution of the social production, that is, economic exploitation sanctioned by means of property rights. The appropriation by the dominant class of surplus produced by exploited classes defines one of the most acute and lasting forms of physical violence: the deprivation suffered by most of the population in the access to and consumption of socially produced goods and services (Engels, 2010, pp. 393-394, orig. 1844). This violence has been recently called ‘structural violence’ (Galtung, 1996) or, as named by Zizek (2008), ‘objective violence’. The striking differences in life expectancy according to socioeconomic condition, even in the contemporary ‘Welfare States’ of the ‘developed countries’, are proof of this (Hattersley, 1999; White and Edgar, 2010; Olshansky et al., 2012). In short, a significant part of the population in class societies suffered this deprivation and, therefore, was objectively victimized even if these did not receive direct trauma, lethal or otherwise, by armed individuals.
• c) The polities (‘proto-states’, ‘early States’, ‘citystates’, ‘civilizations’) maintain political borders defended or questioned militarily. The political borders settle property rights, now understood as appropriation of resources controlled by the ruling class. Political borders turn the ‘land’ into ‘territories’ that restrict the mobility of individuals and groups. In addition, a part of the population, especially in cities and towns, work and live inside densely packed fortified precincts. In some pristine, emblematic cases (Egypt, Mesopotamia, coastal valleys of Peru), political borders were strengthened by ecological boundaries expressed as arid or desert-like environments, which made it hazardous to survive outside the narrow fertile strips next to the river courses where settlements flourished.

Social life in such conditions has been globally documented. In fact, the emergence of closed, territorially bound political units with increasing inequalities and internal labour specialization is a worldwide trend in the last millennia. In certain regions, such as Egypt and Lower Mesopotamia, this trend intensified or accelerated from early times. In short, the life of most of the population in the early class societies and civilizations took place under the following conditions:

• reduced mobility in small, limited geographical and social settings;
• restricted experiences, sharing of information and expectations;
• political subordination;
• lacking economic autonomy, and
• suffering economic exploitation.

In a sense, most of the population in civilizations might be described as ‘humans in captivity’. In these social contexts, what effects and affections could the public exercise of physical violence have had?

PHYSICAL VIOLENCE AND PUBLIC VIOLENCE IN CLASS SOCIETIES: STRUCTURAL ANALYSISTop

When thoroughly exploring the twofold dimension, effective and affective, of physical violence, it is worth asking about the kind of subjective affectation or influence that was pursued with effective executions. To answer this question, we shall start by defining the social groups involved in these practices, and summarize the links among them.

The collective ‘A’ is formed by those who promoted and conducted the execution, that is, the group with the ability to design and carry out this kind of public event. Direct executioners could also be included in ‘A’, when the different roles of promotion and execution are assumed by different people. The collective ‘B’ refers to victims, usually politically and/or economically dependent individuals who are often named as ‘criminals’ in the case of law-mediated punishments, or as ‘servants’, ‘maidens’, ‘assistants’, ‘guardsmen’, ‘captives’, ‘slaves’, etc. in ceremonial sacrifices, especially when these were performed at the funerals of high-order individuals.

However, this social practice is not restricted to ‘A’ and ‘B’ but includes a third group, ‘C’, formed by the public or audience that attends the execution or is informed of it. This third component is paramount as without ‘C’ or with ‘C’ just vaguely informed of ‘deaths’ or ‘absences’, we would be speaking of a different phenomenon, of what are known as ‘disappearances’, in which executors try to erase any trace of the victims, even denying that there have ever been any.

A first interpretation of the executions could be built on the following considerations:

• a) The executions were a demonstration of power by the ruling group (‘A’).
• b) The immediate aim of this demonstration was to impress collective ‘C’, as a means to achieve a further and higher goal: its submission and obedience and, therefore, the maintenance or increase of the power of ‘A’.

This interpretation fits the model of repressive or coercive violence. According to this model, society is divided between repressors and repressed whose mutual relationships are ‘transparent’, without being hidden or distorted by lies, mistakes, ignorance or alienation. All parties would be fully aware of their real social roles, what they are capable of and what they should avoid. Only oblivion could threaten ‘transparency’. This is why periodic public executions are needed to recall and update a basic social knowledge: who has the supreme power, that of deciding on life and death, who holds rulership, command and privileges, and what powerful actions these are capable of performing. Overall, the line between repressors and repressed groups is well marked: repressive violence keeps each group in its social place; violence simply highlights and updates those positions through public performances.

The model of repressive violence is common sense and could be applied to many cases. However, without denying this interpretative approach, what if, within the framework of class societies, this kind of public violence did something other than repress?

LIVING AS HOSTAGESTop

The victimization caused by economic exploitation in class societies can be increased through the public communication of certain forms of physical violence, often surrounded by ceremony. In these practices the executed victims are easily identifiable, but the victimization process does not stop at their corpses. Victimization extends to broader social groups and reaches full social effectiveness when it is firmly established who has the power to procure physical damage and who knows they are not free from being subjected to it. From now on, a new internal division arises in society, that between executors and potentially executed individuals; between those who are capable of harming and people at risk of being seriously harmed.

Neurobiology and clinical and evolutionary psychology have provided some answers about how people react when facing being at risk of serious, even lethal, physical damage (Cantor and Price, 2007; Cantor 2009). The human species, like other mammals, develops a range of defensive behaviours: (a) avoiding places where risk situations may arise, (b) immobility, (c) flight, (d) aggressive resistance and struggle, and (e) appeasement.

For the problem at hand, appeasement is of special interest, since it tends to be a kind of reaction adopted when:

• (a) the specimen is threatened by members of the same species,
• (b) escape is not a feasible alternative and
• (c) the specimen facing the source of risk has little or no chance of success, after having recognized the inferiority of their own force/capability.

In this sense, appeasement is a defensive strategy which can be understood as a ‘reverse flight’: instead of moving away from the threat, it is about approaching its source by adopting a submissive role to try to placate it, making clear that it should not be afraid of active resistance. One of the ways to do so is to ‘alienate’ oneself by identifying as much as possible with the threatening subject. Although there may be a prior and conscious assessment of the risks, these types of defensive responses are unconsciously generated in the amygdala and the hippocampus, and may be left out of any rationalization or imposed on it.

Linking the living conditions of most of the population in class societies with the concept of ‘seclusion’ invites us to consider mechanisms and explanations applied in similar situations. If ‘seclusion’ describes a social relationship (ontological), it is feasible to look for epistemological tools applied by other disciplines at social scales. The search has led us to the so-called ‘Stockholm syndrome’, related to the Freudian ‘identification with the aggressor’[4] or, as it is classified today in Psychology, a variety within the wider label of ‘post-traumatic stress’, namely ‘Complex Post-traumatic Stress Disorder’ or ‘complex PTSD’ (Herman, 1992; Friedman, 2015; Schnyder and Cloitre, 2015). This expression refers to certain psychological effects of the often repeated suffering, of damages and threats that seriously endanger the physical integrity of oneself or of close people. Therefore, it is a form of victimization, often a long-lasting one. Their effects, however, apparently deny victimization, as positive feelings towards those who promote and execute the suffering are observed.

FINAL REMARKSTop

This work arose from a twofold goal. On the one hand, to try to solve an apparent paradox: why a large number of openly violent, discriminatory and asymmetric economic and political systems have not only proved to be durable and expansive, but have enjoyed the explicit approval and complicity of many of their victims. On the other hand, to address this issue by avoiding idealistic explanations, either by appealing to the force of embraced cultural principles, through strictly discursive, educational practices, or by assuming that there will always be powerful, strong minds imposing themselves on ‘weak’ or ‘faint-hearted’ spirits. Instead, the proposal developed here seeks to approach this issue by contextualizing the problem in class societies in light of an explanatory link (psychobiological response). It could be summarized as follows.

• Under conditions of (a) developed division of labour, (b) economic exploitation, and (c) restricted experiences, information and mobility, the exploited population is objectively victimized (damaged).
• In these conditions, physical violence orchestrated, executed and communicated by members of the ruling class can produce positive feelings towards them from a significant proportion of the exploited class or classes.
• This positive affectation, a neurological response in favour of survival in particular situations, could turn into explicit support and allegiance fostering the maintenance, strengthening and spread of deep political-economic asymmetries.
• The feeling of positive affectation adds a new type of damage to that produced by economic exploitation: psychological alienation.

The proposal outlined in this paper could be applied particularly to class societies or civilizations. However, it could be interesting to explore other social contexts and questions as the relation between settled life, the first household units, the seclusion of women inside the ‘home’ and the origins of patriarchy that extends to the present day. In any case, future research will need, first, to gain knowledge of the material living conditions of social groupings: is there a balanced sharing between their respective contribution to the production of goods, subjects (reproduction) and maintenance, and their participation in the use and consumption of all that is socially produced? What, in short, are the material conditions in which different groups develop their lives, regardless of the shared speeches, self-consciousness and expectations to which they could admit? Secondly, it promotes an investigation into the forms of violence exerted within a society, starting with those objectively revealed by physical damages. Thirdly, it encourages research on how violence is communicated to large audiences and embedded in social memory.

Perhaps the persistent, unconditional and sincere adherence of many people to violent, xenophobic, patriarchal, racist, classist, elitist and antisocial leaders and governments may cease to be a paradoxical phenomenon, or the disheartening finding of a supposed essential human foolishness or stupidity. After all, it may be the response of fragmented, specialized, immobilized, exploited and dependent human groups, conscientiously and conveniently damaged and threatened, in pursuit of an autonomy and survival that they perceive beyond their reach.

Does the foregoing lead to fatalism? Of course not. The struggles against the forms of exploitation and exclusion in class societies openly show that victimization does not irretrievably lead to resignation, obedience or blind allegiance to the will of the dominant power. A further line of research, closely related to those mentioned in this section, would explore the ways to avoid or overcome the ‘Stockholm syndrome’. However, before that, it needs to be explained why class societies have been spreading in the last five thousand years to now have become the worldwide hegemonic political model. It is not about certifying the inevitability of these situations or acknowledging their irreversibility, but to find the reasons for their undeniable success, at least temporarily.