Meat sharing for coalitional support

Abstract

In this paper, I review hypotheses about why hunters share meat, and I use quantitative data on meat transfers between households of Achuar, Quichua, and Zapara speakers in Conambo, an indigenous community of horticultural foragers in the Ecuadorian Amazon, to test them. I show that meat is distributed to political allies in Conambo and argue that meat is strategically transferred to recruit and maintain coalitional support in a political landscape where loyalties are shifting, crosscutting, and consequential. Additionally, I find clear evidence of kinship and reciprocity influences on meat transfers, with mixed support for tolerated theft, costly signaling, and showing-off influences. Postmarital residence is matrilocal, hunters have control over meat distribution, game is abundant, and coalitional membership and loyalties are unstable. These environmental and social variables may explain different patterns in meat sharing in Conambo than those found in previous studies.