The second and third parts of this book classify the economic systems of foraging and agricultural societies in the SCCS based on correlations between their institutions of property an distribution. These economic types are then examined for relationships with other social, political, demographic, and environmental factors in order to draw tentative conclusions regarding the origins of the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. The fourth part of the book uses cross-national data to examine similar associations in industrial/service economies, and is not included here.

This article analyzes the predictors of private property ownership with an aim to replicate existing correlations using data from the dissertation of Zelman (1974).

This paper explores sex differences in socialization for boys and girls after describing the worldwide distribution of sex differences in five aspects of socialization; the authors explore conditions that may produce larger differences.

This study investigates correlates of the post-partum sex taboo. Empirical analysis identifies several predictors, from extensive agriculture to localized kin groups. The authors suggest that the taboo imposes a burden on women and unmarried or monogamous young men, and it is best maintained in a community in which elders are in firm control and married women are considered outsiders due to village exogamy.

This book is concerned with explaining variation in the status of women. The author, after measuring over 50 aspects of status, first concludes that status is not a unitary concept. Therefore the author looks at 10 different domains of status. Many traditional explanations are not supported; most support is found for the influence of social complexity which generally lowers female status.

Considerable disagreement exists in regard to the origin and distribution of economic phenomena such as money, slavery, markets, exchange, and imbalanced transfers. Here the author utilizes a worldwide cross-cultural sample of 60 pre-industrial "societies" to empirically test many economic hypotheses, with a focus on distributional mechanisms and institutions.

This article uses factor analysis to identify the key variables underlying the many cross-cultural associations reported by Textor (1967). Twelve factors are identified.

An early cross-cultural study that sought to establish correlations between "stages" of economic culture and a variety of different social and political institutions, such as form of government and justice, marriage and kinship, and behaviors during warfare.

This article tests several hypotheses related to the presence or absence of polygyny. Results suggest a negative relationship between polygyny and male provisioning, and positive relationships between polygyny and warfare, interpersonal aggression, and pathogen stress.

The authors examine degree of intensiveness (kin-relatedness) among foraging and agropastoralist societies, predicting that hunter-gatherers will pursue more extensive kinship networks in order to maximize residential options in the case of unpredictability or uneven geographic distribution of food resources. Support is found for the hypothesis, and it is suggested that while extensive fission-fusion dynamics are beneficial in foraging systems, the increase in cooperation in large-scale agricultural settlements is aided by norms which encourage kin marriage and relatedness.