Captives Were Migrants Too

Captives were a common type of migrant in small-scale societies in the past, yet they have been almost completely ignored by archaeologists. This article emphasizes that captive taking had significant effects on the composition and cultural practices of ancient societies, and that models typically used to understand ancient migration are inappropriate for understanding the movement of captives. The movement of captives across the boundaries of ancient archaeological cultures challenges our view of archaeological cultures as static entities with fixed geographic and temporal boundaries. Archaeologists are encouraged to develop new models and theory that will allow us to understand the effect of captives on material culture in the societies of their captors; in other words, their effect on the archaeological cultures that are so fundamental to our understanding of the past. Key to new models is the recognition that while scholars assume that migrants make informed decisions about when to move and where to go, captives had no such abilities.