This book takes a cross-cultural, cross-historical approach to the study of military deterrence. Political, economic, and geographic correlates are considered, particularly military and diplomatic strategy. Several hypotheses are tested and some are supported.

The purpose of this paper is to consolidate the four available listings of the definitions of settlement size as it is used as a measure of societal complexity. The definitions come from the previously published works of Tatje and Naroll (1970), Naroll and Divale (n.d.), Naroll (1956), and Ember (1963).

This paper discusses the relationship between floor area and settlement population.

This study explores the concept of "healthy" and "sick" societies. The author considers indicators of stress as correlates of sick and healthy societies and finds that the best indicator of the sickness or healthiness of a society is its suicide rate.

This article reviews literature on social evolution, urbanization, and their interrelationships before empirically examining the relationship between settlement size and organizational complexity. An index of social development composed of three indicators is introduced, critiqued, and compared to other classification systems.

This paper investigates two mechanisms of cultural evolution: peaceful diffusion and warlike migration. Two societies, one for each mechanism, were compared to a base society on 11 culture traits. Eight of the 11 traits diffused more readily through peaceful borrowing than through warlike migration. The authors conclude that eliminating warlike migration would slow cultural evolution but that peaceful borrowing is a favored mechanism for culture contact and change.

Drawing from Social Darwinism theories, this article posits warfare (specifically, military success) as a selective mechanism in the evolution of culture. The hypothesis was not supported.

This study investigates the causes of creative florescences in certain time periods in certain societies. Wealth, geographical expansion, democratic support, and external challenge were not significant predictors of creative florescence, but political fragmentation shows a correlation with society’s creativity level.

This article reviews sociological and psychological explanations of suicide, focusing on a thwarting disorientation theory. This theory posits that a person who commits suicide is likely to have lost social ties and perceived someone to blame for that loss. The author examines seven cultural traits (wife-beating, marriage restrictions, divorce freedom, witchcraft accusation, drunken brawling, defiant homicide, and frequent warfare) that can cause thwarting disorientation.

An extension of the author's 1993 study, An Archaeological Correlate of War, this study examines the relationship between community permeability and war in the ethnographic record using Naroll's study on household and population as a model with the aim of making inferences to the archaeological record.