Over the past few decades, military historians have begun to look at the social aspects of war, but the archaeologists and anthropologists here find that even these historians treat war as something set aside from other practices. Seeking to show how war is instead an outgrowth or extension of fundamental features of a society, they cover conceptions of warfare in Western thought and research, pre-state societies, the state, discourse and identity, and weaponry and material culture. Their time frame stretches from Neolithic Britain and Ireland to Bosnia in the 1990s. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)