Bonded ethernet network

If one bonds a number of NIC, is it a requirement that they be connected to the network via a switch? Say that you connect two computers to each other, with 4 NIC on one computer directly connected to 4 NIC on the other. On each these are bonded (called a Team on Windows). I know that if you do use a switch, it must support Static Link Aggregation. But is a switch required to make this work at all? -- Roger Oberholtzer