Small-scale Societies Research Articles

Exploring the role of ecology and social organisation in agropastoral societies: A Bayesian network approach

The present contribution focuses on investigating the interaction of people and environment in small-scale farming societies. Our study is centred on the particular way settlement location constraints economic strategy when technology is limited, and social division of work is not fully developed. Our intention is to investigate prehistoric socioeconomic organisation when farming began in the Old World along the Levant shores of Iberian Peninsula, the Neolithic phenomenon. We approach this subject extracting relevant information from a big set of ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological cases using Machine Learning methods. This paper explores the use of Bayesian networks as explanatory models of the independent variables–the environment- and dependent variables–social decisions-, and also as predictive models. The study highlights how subsistence strategies are modified by ecological and topographical variables of the settlement location and their relationship with social organisation. It also establishes the role of Bayesian networks as a suitable supervised Machine Learning methodology for investigating socio-ecological systems, introducing their use to build useful data-driven models to address relevant archaeological and anthropological questions.

Holocene desertification, traditional ecological knowledge, and human resilience in the eastern Gobi Desert, Mongolia

Dryland regions are particularly challenging for human survival over the course of deep time. This is true for institutionally complex communities as well as small-scale societies that have existed in semi-arid regions throughout the Holocene. This paper examines some of the successful strategies employed by small-scale mobile communities which enhanced their ability to thrive in drylands over the course of thousands of years. Small-scale societies living in drylands must rely on the transmission of Traditional Ecological Knowledge across generations. Some of this knowledge relates to the availability and use of wetlands and other more ephemeral water sources, the exploitation of a diverse range of resources, and the potential for natural storage of food resources as a buffer against regularly occurring drought years in these regions. We compare this understanding with our environmental archeological findings at the Mid-Holocene site of Zaraa Uul in the eastern Gobi Desert of Mongolia. At the site of Zaraa Uul, we show how hunter-gatherer groups returned to a campsite near the edge of a wetland environment over the course of at least two phases during the Mid-Holocene. Here they took advantage of a greater diversity of animal species and plants, including small-grained-grasses and sedges, which could enhance their caloric intake and increase the potential for storable commodities which could be collected as needed from their natural habitat.

Exploring variation and change in a small-scale Indigenous society: the case of (s) in Pirahã

Abstract We present a preliminary quantitative analysis of (s) variation in Pirahã. Previous research noted a gender difference in (s) use in which women use [h] in environments where men use [s]. Using word list data, we analyze (s) rates among three men and three women. Our results indicate that women do utilize [h] more than men, but neither use one variant categorically. Furthermore, (s) is more phonetically variable, and varies in more environments, than previously described. We argue that (s) is undergoing lenition from [s] to [h], and that this change is led by women. This suggests the “female lead” found in many sound change studies is not restricted to the West. The pattern is even more striking because social and cultural factors operate very differently in the Pirahã context. We evaluate whether current explanations for the female lead in sound change are applicable in Pirahã.

The Dead May Kill You

Abstract There is considerable evidence that beliefs in supernatural punishment decrease self-interested behavior and increase cooperation amongst group members. To date, research has largely focused on beliefs concerning omniscient moralistic gods in large-scale societies. While there is an abundance of ethnographic accounts documenting fear of supernatural punishment, there is a dearth of systematic cross-cultural comparative quantitative evidence as to whether belief in supernatural agents with limited powers in small-scale societies also exert these effects. Here, we examine information extracted from the Human Relations Area Files on cultural discourse about the recently deceased, local ancestor spirits, and mortuary practices across 57 representative cultures. We find evidence that in traditional small-scale societies ancestor spirits are commonly believed to be capable of inflicting harm, with many attendant practices aimed at mitigating this danger. However, such beliefs do not appear to promote cooperation, as ancestor spirits seem to be concerned with interactions between themselves and the living, and to prioritize their own welfare. Many attendant practices are inconsistent even with bipartite cooperation with ancestors that could be viewed as a model for other relationships. The broader implications of this research for the cultural evolution of religion are discussed.

Acoustic regularities in infant-directed speech and song across cultures.

When interacting with infants, humans often alter their speech and song in ways thought to support communication. Theories of human child-rearing, informed by data on vocal signalling across species, predict that such alterations should appear globally. Here, we show acoustic differences between infant-directed and adult-directed vocalizations across cultures. We collected 1,615 recordings of infant- and adult-directed speech and song produced by 410 people in 21 urban, rural and small-scale societies. Infant-directedness was reliably classified from acoustic features only, with acoustic profiles of infant-directedness differing across language and music but in consistent fashions. We then studied listener sensitivity to these acoustic features. We played the recordings to 51,065 people from 187 countries, recruited via an English-language website, who guessed whether each vocalization was infant-directed. Their intuitions were more accurate than chance, predictable in part by common sets of acoustic features and robust to the effects of linguistic relatedness between vocalizer and listener. These findings inform hypotheses of the psychological functions and evolution of human communication.

Social status predicts different mating and reproductive success for men and women in China: evidence from the 2010–2017 CGSS data

Evolutionary psychological theories posit that higher social status is conducive to men’s reproductive success. Extant research from historical records, small scale societies, as well as industrialized societies, support this hypothesis. However, the relationship between status difference between spouses and reproductive success has been investigated less. Moreover, even fewer studies have directly compared the effect of status and status difference between spouses on reproductive success in men and women. Using data from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) conducted between 2010 and 2017 (N = 55,875; 28,931 women) and operationalizing social status as standardized income and educational level (compared with same-sex peers), we examined how social status and relative status between spouses impact men’s and women’s mating and reproductive success. We found that (1) men with higher social status were more likely to have long-term mating (being in a marriage and/or not going through marriage disruption) and reproductive success, mainly through having a lower risk of childlessness; (2) women with higher social status were less likely to have mating and reproductive success; and (3) relative status between spouses had an impact on the couple’s reproductive success so that couples, where the husband had higher status compared to the wife, had higher reproductive success. Thus, social status positively impacted men’s reproductive success, but relative status between spouses also affected mating and impacted childbearing decisions.Significance statementIn terms of standardized educational level and income among peers, social status positively predicts men’s mating and reproductive success in contemporary China. However, while a higher social status increases the probability of having at least one child, it does not predict a greater number of children for men. A status difference between spouses, on the other hand, consistently predicts having children. Thus, the higher the husband’s status relative to his wife, the greater the likelihood of having the first, second, and third children. The current results suggest that when examining the effect of status on mating and reproduction, social status and status within a family should be considered. We also stress the importance of exploring the potential proximate mechanisms by which a status difference influences childbearing decisions.

Stable isotopic reconstruction of weaning and childhood diet during times of change: An examination of life history and health of San Francisco Bay Area juveniles

This study explores the impact of environmental and social transitions on the weaning age, childhood diet, and health of 39 individuals who died in childhood from the prehistoric San Francisco Bay Area Ohlone site of CA-ALA-329 (Mánni Muwékma Kúksú Hóowok Yatiš Túnnešte-tka). The sample spans the Middle and Late Periods, during which these environmental and social transitions occurred. According to the stable carbon and nitrogen isotope composition of bone and dental tissues, weaning age does not differ between temporal periods. However, the age at which weaning starts does differ from Bay Area individuals who lived into adulthood reported in previous studies; individuals from the present study started to wean later. Isotopic signatures of childhood independent foraging were observed in five children (median age-at-death between 4 and 7.5 years). Three of these children lived during the Middle Period and two lived during the Late Period. In addition, there is a frequency of 59% of skeletal indicators of poor health within our sample, which implies that these individuals who died prematurely in childhood appear to have been stressed. These results suggest that life history and health are influenced by a variety of factors that contribute to stress, such as embodied capital, resource availability, plant intensification, and transition to a storage economy. This study contributes to anthropological discussions regarding the facultative nature of childhood and life history. Broadly speaking, this study addresses how past small-scale societies adapted to climate and social change and the consequences of these adaptations on society’s youngest and possibly most vulnerable members.

Late Woodland feasting and social networks in the lower Missouri River region

Feasting and its function among small scale societies have received little attention among many descriptive and theoretical studies of this activity. Evidence of feasting focused on large roasting pits by Late Woodland (AD 500–1000) hunter-gatherer-gardeners in the lower Missouri River region on the eastern edge of the Great Plains is presented. Two features at the Quixote site and lipid analyses of stones from them attest single events focused on roasting deer and fish, and perhaps ritual use of red cedar and ceramic pipes. Such features at other Late Woodland sites in the LMRR, specifically the Valley Falls locality of the Delaware River valley in northeastern Kansas, are reinterpreted. Burned stone features at Middle Woodland sites differ and suggest pit roasting was a practice of dispersed Late Woodland groups. Feasting for solidarity forged a social network based on reciprocity, not competition, to mitigate food insecurity among diffuse, low level food producers.

Large-scale cooperation in small-scale foraging societies.

We present evidence that people in small-scale mobile hunter-gatherer societies cooperated in large numbers to produce collective goods. Foragers engaged in large-scale communal hunts and constructed shared capital facilities; they made shared investments in improving the local environment; and they participated in warfare, formed enduring alliances, and established trading networks. Large-scale collective action often played a crucial role in subsistence. The provision of public goods involved the cooperation of many individuals, so each person made only a small contribution. This evidence suggests that large-scale cooperation occurred in the Pleistocene societies that encompass most of human evolutionary history, and therefore it is unlikely that large-scale cooperation in Holocene food producing societies results from an evolved psychology shaped only in small-group interactions. Instead, large-scale human cooperation needs to be explained as an adaptation, likely rooted in distinctive features of human biology, grammatical language, increased cognitive ability, and cumulative cultural adaptation.

Establishing an economically and biologically sustainable and viable inland fisheries sector in South Africa – pitfalls of ‘path dependence’

Small-scale fisheries play a significant role in livelihoods and food and nutrition security for millions of people around the world. However, these benefits are under threat, especially in developing countries such as in Africa, as a result of poor governance. The historical developmentalist and welfarist approach to management of small-scale fisheries in developing countries, dating back from colonial era, has resulted in problems of open-access regimes that usually lead to over-capitalisation, geographic spread of landing sites that makes it difficult to organise fishers for management activities, inadequate management capacity and poor funding of the sector. These lead to over-exploitation and degradation of fish resources, thereby negatively impacting the current and long-term benefits for small-scale fishing communities and society at large. Most countries that start off with such problematic fisheries management regimes and set on this path find it very difficult to reform the regimes. This article argues that South Africa needs to draw lessons from the mistakes of other (developing) countries in terms of the type of fisheries management regime governing small-scale fisheries, as it sets up and creates a new inland small-scale fisheries sector. Such ‘path dependence’ can set a country on courses of action and decisions that are extremely difficult to reverse and extricate a country from. There is no doubt of the need for more equitable distribution of access rights and benefits to inland fisheries for communities that had been excluded and marginalised under colonialism and apartheid. However, this has to been done without endangering the fish resources and in effect the very sustainable social-economic benefits that such reforms intend to achieve.

Moralizing gods, local gods, and complexity in Hindu god concepts: evidence from South India

ABSTRACT Cultural evolutionary approaches to religion have found that in small-scale societies, “local gods” (LGs) usually care about ritual, in-group cooperation, and ecological challenges, whereas in large-scale societies, “moralizing gods” (MGs) are more concerned with prosociality. In contrast, Hindu deities are considered aspects of one god, and urban regions include LGs, complicating the prevailing distinction. The current study investigated perceptions of deities in Mysore, India, among Hindus (N = 165) who primarily worship Shiva, a prototypical MG, and Chamundeshwari, the LG. Using surveys and experimental games, our results indicated that Chamundeshwari is perceived as possessing characteristics typical of both LGs and MGs. Furthermore, beliefs about Shiva as a moralizing and punitive god were associated with prosocial game allocations in three experimental economic games, but similar beliefs about Chamundeshwari were not. Participation in rituals for Shiva predicted allocations toward outgroup members in one game, whereas participation in rituals for Chamundeshwari predicted selfish allocations in one game. These mixed results demonstrate the challenges that demographic and cultural variation can impose on dichotomous models of deities to explain religious variation, and we offer directions for future research to better understand such complexity.

Newly Sedentary Lanoh and the Communal Challenge: A Critical Commentary on Anarchist Anthropology

Discussions of anarchic solidarity in relation to rainforest foragers have resulted in important insights into the sociality of such groups. However, whether anarchic solidarity prevails under the circumstances of regroupment and resettlement resulting in unprecedented communal projects has not been adequately addressed. These communal projects present new challenges to the social and community organization of previously mobile foragers. This article examines the extent to which newly sedentary Lanoh forager-traders of northern Perak, Malaysia, continue to display “cooperative autonomy”, a construct capturing both anarchist aspirations and key aspects of the sociality of egalitarian hunter-gatherers. This study suggests that though foragers such as Lanoh may superficially share attributes associated with anarchic solidarity, they profoundly differ from anarchists in their attitudes toward authority and cooperation. While ideological anarchism is clearly counter-dominant, the same cannot always be said about egalitarian foragers. We may conclude from this research that “cooperative autonomy” is still insufficiently understood and does not grant an assumptive blanket application across contexts. To promote our understanding of the sociality of small-scale societies, this construct requires further scrutiny and development.

Indigenous and Traditional Management Creates and Maintains the Diversity of Ecosystems of South American Tropical Savannas

The tropical South American savannas have been occupied and manipulated by humans since the late Pleistocene. Ecologists consider that soils, hydrology, and seasonal precipitation influence the structure and composition of plants and the fire-proneness of savannas. However, the human influence on these dynamics remains uncertain. This is because little is known about human activities and what influence they have on the diversity of ecosystems. Considering this, our study sought to synthesize the management practices used by small-scale societies of the South American savannas, compile the species that are the focus of direct management, and demonstrate the role of this management in maintaining the diverse ecosystems that make up the savannas. We also set out to test the hypotheses that forms of management differ depending on the ecosystem and cultural matrices. To do so, we conducted a systematic review, in which we collected 51 articles with information about the management carried out by small-scale societies. From this, we categorized 10 management practices directed to ecosystems: protection of the ecosystem, enrichment of species, topographic changes, increased soil fertility, cleaning, prevention of fire, resource promotion, driving of game, swidden-fallow, and maintenance of ecosystem structure. We identified 19 native plant species whose populations are managedin-situ. These management practices have proven capable of keeping savanna and grassland ecosystems open and increasing the occurrence of forest ecosystems in the mosaic, as well as favoring plants of human interest in general. We note that there is a relationship between management practices with ecosystems and cultures, which suggests that both factors influence the management of landscapes. We conclude that management practices of small-scale societies are responsible for domesticating South American tropical savannas and that these savannas are composed of a mosaic of culturally constructed niches. The small-scale societies that inhabit these environments have important traditional ecological knowledge and strategies that enable the use, conservation, and restoration of savannas, extremely threatened by agribusiness today.Systematic Review Registration: [website], identifier [registration number].

Is a downwards head tilt a cross-cultural signal of dominance? Evidence for a universal visual illusion

The present pre-registered research provides the first evidence that a downwards head tilt is sufficient to communicate dominance from a neutral facial expression among the Mayangna, members of an unindustrialized, small-scale traditional society in Nicaragua who have had minimal exposure to North American culture. Consistent with the Action Unit imposter effect observed in North American populations (Witkower and Tracy in Psychol Sci 30:893–906, 2019), changes to the appearance of the upper face caused by a downwards head tilt were sufficient to elicit perceptions of dominance among this population. Given that the Mayangna are unlikely to associate a downwards head tilt or related apparent facial changes with dominance as a result of cross-cultural learning, the present results suggest that perceptions of dominance formed from a downwards head tilt, and the visual illusion shaping these perceptions, are a widely generalizable, and possibly universal, feature of human psychology.

Authority matters: propaganda and the coevolution of behaviour and attitudes.

Human decision-making is controlled by various factors including material cost-benefit considerations, values and beliefs, social influences, cognitive factors and errors. Among social influences, those by external authorities (e.g. educational, cultural, religious, political, administrative, etc.) are particularly important owing to their potential reach and power. To better understand the effects of 'soft' power of authorities we develop a unifying theoretical framework integrating material, cognitive and social forces controlling the joint dynamics of individual actions and beliefs. We apply our approach to three different phenomena: evolution of food sharing in small-scale societies, participation in political protests and effects of priming social identity in behavioural experiments. For each of these applications, we show that our approach leads to different (or simpler) explanations of human behaviour than alternatives. We highlight the type of measurements which can be helpful in developing practical applications of our approach. We identify and explicitly characterise the degree of mismatch between individual actions and attitudes. We assert that the effects of external authorities, of changing beliefs and of differences between people must be studied empirically, included in mathematical models, and accounted for when developing different policies aiming to modify or sustain human behaviour.

The complex life course of mobility: Quantitative description of 300,000 residential moves in 1850-1950 Netherlands.

Mobility is a major mechanism of human adaptation, both in the deep past and in the present. Decades of research in the human evolutionary sciences have elucidated how much, how and when individuals and groups move in response to their ecology. Prior research has focused on small-scale subsistence societies, often in marginal environments and yielding small samples. Yet adaptive movement is commonplace across human societies, providing an opportunity to study human mobility more broadly. We provide a detailed, life-course structured demonstration, describing the residential mobility system of a historical population living between 1850 and 1950 in the industrialising Netherlands. We focus on how moves are patterned over the lifespan, attending to individual variation and stratifying our analyses by gender. We conclude that this population was not stationary: the median total moves in a lifetime were 10, with a wide range of variation and an uneven distribution over the life course. Mobility peaks in early adulthood (age 20-30) in this population, and this peak is consistent in all the studied cohorts, and both genders. Mobile populations in sedentary settlements provide a productive avenue for research on adaptive mobility and its relationship to human life history, and historical databases are useful for addressing evolutionarily motivated questions.

Managing the stresses of group-living in the transition to village life.

Group living is stressful for all mammals, and these stresses limit the size of their social groups. Humans live in very large groups by mammal standards, so how have they solved this problem? I use homicide rates as an index of within-community stress for humans living in small-scale ethnographic societies, and show that the frequency of homicide increases linearly with living-group size in hunter-gatherers. This is not, however, the case for cultivators living in permanent settlements, where there appears to be a 'glass ceiling' below which homicide rates oscillate. This glass ceiling correlates with the adoption of social institutions that allow tensions to be managed. The results suggest (a) that the transition to a settled lifestyle in the Neolithic may have been more challenging than is usually assumed and (b) that the increases in settlement size that followed the first villages necessitated the introduction of a series of social institutions designed to manage within-community discord.

Children across societies enforce conventional norms but in culturally variable ways

Individuals in all societies conform to their cultural group's conventional norms, from how to dress on certain occasions to how to play certain games. It is an open question, however, whether individuals in all societies actively enforce the group's conventional norms when others break them. We investigated third-party enforcement of conventional norms in 5- to 8-y-old children (n = 376) from eight diverse small-scale and large-scale societies. Children learned the rules for playing a new sorting game and then, observed a peer who was apparently breaking them. Across societies, observer children intervened frequently to correct their misguided peer (i.e., more frequently than when the peer was following the rules). However, both the magnitude and the style of interventions varied across societies. Detailed analyses of children's interactions revealed societal differences in children's verbal protest styles as well as in their use of actions, gestures, and nonverbal expressions to intervene. Observers' interventions predicted whether their peer adopted the observer's sorting rule. Enforcement of conventional norms appears to be an early emerging human universal that comes to be expressed in culturally variable ways.

Créer de la richesse à l’ère glaciaire : perles en ivoire de l’Aurignacien français

The foundations of more pronounced forms of material inequality that developed in later societies lie in the material wealth generated by earlier societies, like the hunter-gatherers of the Upper Palaeolithic, and the structures for wealth transmission and circulation that they developed. Additionally, the extent to which we recognize wealth in the archaeological record depends on our definitions and understandings of wealth. Using the ivory beads of the Early Aurignacian in southwestern France as an example, I argue that bead-production was a strategy for generating material wealth that served as a commodity in the networks of relational wealth that were essential to survival. Drawing on the classes of wealth defined by Bowles et al. (2010), I present a model for understanding the conditions that drove bead-production in terms of material and relational wealth. Based on Spielmann’s (2002) framework for ritual production in small-scale societies, I argue that an emphasis on acquisition and display (in forms such as hoards/caches, burials, and monuments) presents only a partial picture of how wealth may have functioned in Ice-Age societies. Finally, turning to the broader contexts of Aurignacian ivory beads, I evaluate the evidence for social complexity in the Early Aurignacian of southwestern France based on the currently documented archaeological evidence. I argue that wealth was central to the success of Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers, that this wealth must be evaluated in terms appropriate to small-scale mobile societies, and that understanding the nature and function of wealth in these contexts is critical to tracing the formation of more pronounced forms of wealth and inequality in later contexts.

Vocal communication across cultures: theoretical and methodological issues.

The study of human vocal communication has been conducted primarily in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic (WEIRD) societies. Recently, cross-cultural investigations in several domains of voice research have been expanding into more diverse populations. Theoretically, it is important to understand how universals and cultural variations interact in vocal production and perception, but cross-cultural voice research presents many methodological challenges. Experimental methods typically used in WEIRD societies are often not possible to implement in many populations such as rural, small-scale societies. Moreover, theoretical and methodological issues are often unnecessarily intertwined. Here, I focus on three areas of cross-cultural voice modulation research: (i) vocal signalling of formidability and dominance, (ii) vocal emotions, and (iii) production and perception of infant-directed speech. Research in these specific areas illustrates challenges that apply more generally across the human behavioural sciences but also reveals promise as we develop our understanding of the evolution of human communication.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact (Part II)’.