A Window on War: Women and Militarism in Ancient Greece
Caporael, Linnda R. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)
Symposium conducted at the meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, IL, November (1987)
Abstract
Evolutionary ecologists presuppose a common, widely used, and empirically dubious psychological foundation- -humans are fundamentally self-interested- -for theories on the causes of war. By focusing on women, a novel window for assessing the psychological 
components of such theories can be developed. The Greeks are of special interest in this exercise because 1) women have a prominent role in Greek tests, and 2) the ancient Greeks are transitional between kin-level and state-level organization. Social identity theory, which is largely concerned with how cultural categories and social structures engage an evolved cognitive bias, is introduced as an alternative that is better able to explain anomalies and deviations from fundamental selfishness assumptions. The analysis undertaken here suggests that 1) an important function of war is to provide a cultural basis for establishing a uniquely masculine social identity. 2) the organizational transition from kinship to state also establishes a reorganization of social identity category boundaries.
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