It's easy to see it all as feuds and vendettas, but 1) it isn't, and 2) even the feuds and vendettas are actually strategic and policy oriented, aimed at establishing and maintaining credibility in an environment where a reputation for fierceness is the only form of deterrence.
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Certainly, the warfare - especially small scale local warfare - of the Middle Ages was often not much more complex than a man getting his near family and their retainers together to go fight. Defining that as 'pre-political' seems silly to me.
Of course, most of the sort of warfare we have evidence for, even in the pre-historic period, involves groups larger than a single nuclear family. I'd say the decision of a 100-person tribal unit with c. 30 warriors to go cattle-raiding is political in nature.
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I think Gat shows very clearly the continuity between low level decision making around violence and larger scale warfare, so I absolutely accept the idea that there is no clear break point where a different ‘political’ process emerges. It suggests that we should...
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maybe take the title of De Waal’s ‘Chimpanzee Politics’ quite literally. I do feel like maybe there is still something to be said about a distinction between private violence and political enterprises, but maybe that is only drawable once there are formal group leaders.
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