This book investigates peaceful societies and the social and ecological conditions that discourage war. The author uses ethnographic examples, cross-cultural findings, primatology, and archaeology to examine war, social organization, human evolution, and conflict management.

This chapter includes cross-cultural tests of the relationship between social complexity of hunter-gatherer groups and warfare. Results suggest that more complex and equestrian hunter-gatherer societies tend to be more war-like and less complex hunter gatherer societies tend to be more peaceful.

This article examines the incidence of warfare in mobile forager band societies. Data analysis suggests that the majority of lethal aggression in such societies can be classified as homicide. Feuding is common and warfare a definite minority. The authors offer several reasons why warfare would be uncommon in such societies: residence, descent, subsistence strategy, and social order are all cited.

In this article, the authors explore cultural variables that they propose contribute to the maintenance of peace in non-warring societies. These variables are compared in 16 peaceful systems (as coded by the authors from anthropological and historical data) and in 30 warring societies taken from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS). Findings associate more peaceful cultures with peace systems, and non-peaceful cultures with warring societies.

This article examines cultural forms of population control. Results suggest that female infanticide and warfare are interrelated and effective forms of population control.

Thi study tests a hypothesis on the relationship between frequency of warfare and sociocultural development.

This study investigates the presence of feuding, arguing that a solely evolutionary or functional approach misses important inter-societal factors. Results indicate that while fraternal interest groups are associated with feuding, the presence of war and level of political integration also increase the likelihood of feuding.

This article challenges common assumptions about hunter-gatherers and demonstrates that previous ideas about residence, division of labor and warfare are not supported by the cross-cultural data.

This study explores predictors of variation in two dimensions of marital residence patterns among hunter-gatherers: 1) the tendency toward patrilocality versus matrilocality and 2) the tendency toward unilocality versus bilocality.

Author proposes and presents evidence in support of the theory that most societies practice virilocal or patrilocal residence (this is the "normal" pattern" and that matrilocal residence is adopted when societies migrate to an already populated area.