This study seeks to investigate the little-understood intermediate region between farming and foraging subsistence strategies. The authors seek to evaluate the extent to which such "middle-ground" subsistence methods actually exist, whether there is any geographical patterning to them, and if different crop assemblages/dependencies make middle-ground subsistence strategies more or less likely. They find that agro-pastoral, cereal-based societies in Africa and Eurasia are more likely to be dependent on farming (defined here as including both cultivation and animal husbandry), whereas societies in North America and those reliant on root crops and arboriculture in the wet tropics incorporate both farming and foraging. They conclude that there is likely more of a "middle-ground" between foraging and farming than has typically been allowed for in the literature.

This study, primarily a review on the evolution of the human diet, also includes a small study on the distribution of meat-eating and its relationship with climate and cultural factors, namely subsistence type. The authors find that societies with subsistence strategies that prioritize fishing, hunting, or pastoralism also tend to consume more animal products, whereas those that focus on agriculture have more plant-based diets. The authors argue that these small-scale societies have a healthier approach to diet than industrialized societies regardless of their subsistence type or meat consumption.

This article explores the association between father-son relationships and bridewealth. Bridewealth becomes an instrument through which male parents impose their will on their male offspring. The hypotheses are supported by the results presented.

In this study, the authors draw from intensity theory and combine previous research from the fields of behavioral ecology, economics, and social evolution to analyze drivers in the emergence and persistence of inequality across the world. They propose that environmental heterogeneity and circumscription (the difficulty of moving and establishing oneself in a new environment relative to remaining in the current one) play a significant role in the stratification of societies. Their results indicate that situations arise from various environmental conditions and levels of circumscription that may result in an individual giving up autonomy for material gain, thus favoring inequality.

In this pilot study, the authors investigate the relationships between both subsistence types and environmental conditions, and various coping mechanisms for drought in 35 societies in Africa. Using Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA), they find subsistence strategies to have a more significant correlation with the distribution of coping strategies for drought than environmental conditions.

Using a cross-cultural sample of 91 societies, this paper draws on ecological theory to test if unpredictable environments will favor subsistence diversification. The general hypothesis is that societies with high climate unpredictability and resource stress would exhibit more subsistence diversity than societies in more stable climates. The authors examined four environmental and resource stress variables while controlling for temperature variance, subsistence activity, and phylogeny. Support was found for 2 of the 4 variables--chronic scarcity and environmental instability. In the discussion they suggest that more commonly observed events (e.g. annual hunger and climate unpredictability) may give people more motivation to change subsistence than rarer events (e.g. natural hazards and famine).

Authors undertook two studies to investigate the natures of work and play cross-culturally in children ages 6-10. The first study investigated potential variables affecting cross-cultural variation in the degree of children's contribution to economic work. The second study investigated the degree to which (and variables affecting why) forms of child's play reflect economic work and/or adult activities across various cultures.

In this study, the authors examine pathways to social inequality, specifically social class hierarchy, in 408 non-industrial societies. In a path model, they find social class hierarchy to be directly associated with increased population size, intensive agriculture and large animal husbandry, real property inheritance (unigeniture) and hereditary political succession, with an overall R-squared of 0.45. They conclude that a complex web of effects consisting of environmental variables, mediated by resource intensification, wealth transmission variables, and population size all shape social inequality.

Given that research on female political representation tends to be overlooked across many societies, this study investigates whether historical female political leadership influences contemporary female political representation in Africa. The authors hypothesize that precolonial traditions of women in leadership persist in shaping present-day representation. Using two original datasets—one from cross-cultural samples and one from previous elections—they find that ethnic groups with histories of female leaders have more women elected today, with results also show that many institutional factors have shaped women’s traditional political roles, and that the effects of historical colonialism have reversed much of their influence. The conclusion is that historical female leadership continues to affect modern representation, though shaped by institutional change.

Authors use genealogical data to investigate pair bond stability and reproductive skew across a sample of 80 small-scale societies. Results suggest that male reproductive skew and pair-bond stability are independent sources of cross-cultural variation in human mating patterns.