Considers the effect of data quality and gender of ethnographer on the relationship between female status and cultural complexity. Suggest that data quality controls clarify the nature of the relationship.

Author proposes and presents evidence in support of the theory that most societies practice virilocal or patrilocal residence (this is the "normal" pattern" and that matrilocal residence is adopted when societies migrate to an already populated area.

This study focuses on the factors associated with the development and persistence of an ideology of male supremacy. Authors identify several realms of culture that show a clear male preference and suggest that warfare is the most significant cause of the male supremacy complex in preindustrial societies. Authors hypothesize that warfare will be positively related to female infanticide. Results support this hypothesis. Another hypothesis relating diet to warfare and infanticide is provided, but not tested.

This article examines cultural forms of population control. Results suggest that female infanticide and warfare are interrelated and effective forms of population control.

In this article, the authors seek to investigate why some societies reject agriculture despite its many benefits. By modeling data regarding ecological fitness and cultural transmission, the authors found predictors for the degree to which a society relies on agriculture. The authors conclude that the degree of fitness a local environment had for early domesticates as well as the degree of contact with neighboring societies strongly predicts levels of dependence on agriculture.

The capacity for cumulative cultural evolution has often been invoked to explain the great diversity of habitats occupied by humans. This theory of cultural evolution emphasizes the gradual accumulation of technologies and cultural practices over many generations, and predicts that larger populations will generate more complex cultural adaptations than smaller, isolated ones. Here, the authors investigate the marine foraging tool repertoires of 10 Oceanic societies to determine whether population size and intergroup contact affect the cultural processes by which tool kits evolve.

This study employs optimal scaling analysis to examine change in subsistence economy in a cross-cultural sample of 73 societies. Findings are discussed in addition to methodological considerations for sampling.

This paper investigates two mechanisms of cultural evolution: peaceful diffusion and warlike migration. Two societies, one for each mechanism, were compared to a base society on 11 culture traits. Eight of the 11 traits diffused more readily through peaceful borrowing than through warlike migration. The authors conclude that eliminating warlike migration would slow cultural evolution but that peaceful borrowing is a favored mechanism for culture contact and change.

Inter-group variation is greater in humans than in any other animal, and scholars continue to debate the cause of this diversity. Two competing explanatory models of human variation emphasize either (1) ecological differences and "evoked" culture or (2) population-level effects of cultural transmission. The former emphasizes mechanisms that operate within a single generation, while the latter emphasizes cumulative cultural history operating over many generations. To test these competing models, the authors measured the relative power of ecological variables as compared to culture history to predict behavioral variation in 172 western North American tribes. Culture history is subdivided into culture phylogeny (based on language phylogeny) and spatial distance.

The authors examine multiple ecological variables as possible predictors of language diversity in North America using path analysis, mechanistic simulation modelling, and geographically weighted regression. They conclude that many of the variables do not predict language diversity, but rather are mediated by population density. The authors also find that the variables' ability to predict is not universal across the continent, but rather more regional.