Rich ethnographic treatments and historical descriptions make it clear what a varied and complicated thing warfare was in the premodern era. But despite some important contributions, we have not gone very far to map out that space of possibility – its axes, clusters, and gaps. Traditionally, archaeological research on war has focused on severity – that is, “was there war or not?” – and its possible drivers more than other realms of variation. At times, archaeologists have absorbed the erroneous impression that war was mainly about demographic pressure and land seizure. One pernicious result is an imaginary dichotomy of religiously motivated, ritualized fighting over intangibles, and secular, severe warfare over land. This dichotomy does not correspond to reality, but it continues to surface and influence scholarly discourse.