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Articles 1 - 5 of 5
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Cultural And Reproductive Success And The Causes Of War: A Yanomamö Perspective, Raymond B. Hames
Cultural And Reproductive Success And The Causes Of War: A Yanomamö Perspective, Raymond B. Hames
Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications
Inter-group competition including warfare is posited to be a key force in human evolution (Alexander, 1990; Choi & Bowles, 2007; Wrangham, 1999). Chagnon's research on the Yanomamö is seminal to understanding warfare in the types of societies characteristic of human evolutionary history. Chagnon's empirical analyses of the hypothesis that competition for status or cultural success is linked to reproduction (Irons, 1979) and warfare attracted considerable controversy. Potential causal factors include “blood revenge”, mate competition, resource shortages or inequality, and peace-making institutions (Boehm, 1984; Keeley's (1997); Meggitt, 1977; Wiessner and Pupu, 2012; Wrangham et al., 2006). Here we highlight Chagnon's contributions …
Pacifying Hunter-Gatherers, Raymond B. Hames
Pacifying Hunter-Gatherers, Raymond B. Hames
Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications
There is a well-entrenched schism on the frequency (how often), intensity (deaths per 100,000/year), and evolutionary significance of warfare among hunter-gatherers compared with large-scale societies. To simplify, Rousseauians argue that warfare among prehistoric and contemporary hunter-gatherers was nearly absent and, if present, was a late cultural invention. In contrast, so-called Hobbesians argue that violence was relatively common but variable among hunter-gatherers. To defend their views, Rousseauians resort to a variety of tactics to diminish the apparent frequency and intensity of hunter-gatherer warfare. These tactics include redefining war, censoring ethnographic accounts of warfare in comparative analyses, misconstruing archaeological evidence, and claiming …
Women’S Work, Child Care, And Helpers-At-The-Nest In A Hunter-Gatherer Society, Raymond Hames, Patricia Draper
Women’S Work, Child Care, And Helpers-At-The-Nest In A Hunter-Gatherer Society, Raymond Hames, Patricia Draper
Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications
Considerable research on helpers-at-the-nest demonstrates the positive effects of firstborn daughters on a mother’s reproductive success and the survival of her children compared with women who have firstborn sons. This research is largely restricted to agricultural settings. In the present study we ask: “Does ‘daughter first’ improve mothers’ reproductive success in a hunting and gathering context?” Through an analysis of 84 postreproductive women in this population we find that the sex of the first- or second-born child has no effect on a mother’s fertility or the survival of her offspring. We conclude that specific environmental and economic factors underlay the …
Birth Order, Sibling Investment, And Fertility Among Ju/’Hoansi (!Kung), Patricia Draper, Raymond Hames
Birth Order, Sibling Investment, And Fertility Among Ju/’Hoansi (!Kung), Patricia Draper, Raymond Hames
Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications
Birth order has been examined over a wide variety of dimensions in the context of modern populations. A consistent message has been that it is better to be born first. The analysis of birth order in this paper is different in several ways from other investigations into birth order effects. First, we examine the effect of birth order in an egalitarian, small-scale, kin-based society, which has not been done before. Second, we use a different outcome measure, fertility, rather than outcome measures of social, psychological, or economic success. We find, third, that being born late in an egalitarian, technologically simple …
Describing And Comparing Archaeological Spatial Structures, Luann Wandsnider
Describing And Comparing Archaeological Spatial Structures, Luann Wandsnider
Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications
Quantitative archaeological spatial analysis today is radically different from that introduced more than 20 years ago. Today spatial analysis is couched in more general formational terms that include earlier functional pursuits. Today spatial analysts (1) focus on individual formationally sensitive artifact or element attributes, rather than on types; (2) use distributional rather than partitive methods and techniques; (3) consider a suite of such attributes to construct the formational history of archaeological deposits; and, least commonly, (4) undertake comparative spatial analysis. An elaboration of the latter tactic is proposed here, that of characterizing spatial structure in terms of structural elements (or …