62 A chapter excluded from the edited volume, Social Violence in the Prehispanic American Southwest (University of Arizona Press, 2008). The chapter and book originated in a 2001 Society for Amerian Archaeology symposium. The title refers to a line in the then 30-, now 40-year-old song Silver Spoon. Chapter 3 Cannibal Questions Stephen H. Lekson In Thomas Hardy’s mega-play The Dynasts (“A Drama of the Napoleonic Wars in One Hundred and Thirty Scenes”), a half-dozen supernaturals comment on the long and convoluted action. This spectral chorus includes nasty “Spirit Sinister” and saintly “Spirit of the Pities.” In Part I, Act II, Scene V (set among tumuli!), Spirit Sinister applauds the imminent invasion of England, with its promise of pleasing slaughter. “War makes rattling good history,” Sinister says, “but Peace is poor reading.” Pities replies,“Gross hypocrite!” Sinister meant what he said—–he’s consistently and unhypocritically nasty––but Pities was right for the rest of us. And here is our dilemma: would we rather see “Cannibals in the Canyon” on the cover of The New Yorker (Preston 1998) or see no archaeology there at all? In this chapter, I look not at Southwestern warfare as a research agenda but at why war matters and to which audiences. Does war matter? Of course it does. Does warfare in the ancient Southwest matter? Again, yes, but a conditional “yes.” It matters to particular audiences for particular purposes. And it is on the smaller, provincial problems of warfare in the ancient Southwest, with its