This paper seeks to understand the roles played by children and adolescents in hunter-gatherer societies in relation to their social and ecological context. The authors set out to investigate how environmental factors, ecological risk, and the energetic contributions of adult men and women to food production may have influenced children/adolescent allocation of time to child care, domestic work, food production, and play. In order to carry out this study, the authors logged the behaviors of 690 children and adolescents from twelve hunter-gatherer and mixed-subsistence societies (Agta, Aka, Baka, BaYaka, Dukha, Hadza, Matsi-genka, Maya, Mayangna, Mikea, Pume, and Tsimane), totaling 85,597 unique observations. The study found that harsh environmental factors were not associated with child/adolescent time allocation, but that local ecological risk such as dangerous animals and lack of water availability predicted decreased time allocation to child care and domestic work, and that increased adult female participation in food production was associated with less time invested in child care among boys. It also found that all gendered differences in time allocation among children were stronger when men made greater contributions to food production than women. The authors interpret these results to signify that parents may play a role in preparing their children for environmental and ecological difficulty in order to help them develop skills that will help them become useful community members as adults.

The authors design and implement two tasks requiring linguistic and non-linguistic spatial reference across a linguistically-diverse sample in order to examine the relationship between language and cognition cross-culturally. The results, which indicate large conceptual variation in frame of spatial reference across as well as strong correlation between use of absolute descriptors and absolute cognitive representations within language communities, suggest that language structure may actively shape the systems of spatial representation available to different cultural groups.

In order to investigate cross-cultural variation in systems of conversational turn-taking (who speaks and when), the researchers analyze the association of various contextual, verbal, and non-verbal factors with mean response time. Despite some variation in response time between languages, each of the explanatory variables is found to have significant impact on response time independent of language. A further test on subjective perception of ideal response time suggests that although similar factors act on response patterns cross-culturally (in support of a 'universal systems' theory), speakers are hypersensitive to even minor cultural variations in response time.

This paper examines the relationship between the complexity of a society's material culture and its development of cognitive technologies for numeration and timekeeping. The researcher claims that the resulting positive correlation between these variables as support for a theory of material culture as 'scaffolding' for number concepts, providing tangible, shareable, manipulable forms for abstract numerical constructions.

The authors predict that fitness outcomes will be negatively associated with spousal relatedness among foragers but positively associated among non-foragers, due to the greater social benefits of intensive kinship systems among non-foragers. Support is found for this hypothesis; however, an interaction effect is discovered with inbreeding, which appears to account for the variability in these relationships independent of subsistence activity. The authors qualify this support in order to explain why the incidence of cousin-marriage in non-foraging societies is not higher.

Stark attempts to resituate Tylor's formulation of religion by calling into question Swanson's (1960) and Peregrine's (1996) findings that supernatural sanctions and moral behavior are consistently correlated in small-scale societies. Positing that Swanson's correlations were confounded by variables related to cultural complexity, Stark tests the association of presence of moralizing Gods with cultural complexity explicitly, as well as measures of morality in various nations as provided by the World Values Survey (1990-1991). The robust correlations across cultures noted below, as well as cross-national findings, provide support for the researcher's theory that it is particular conceptions of God rather than participation in rites and rituals which empower religion to sustain complex moral culture.

Name-soul belief systems operate under the belief that deceased ancestors will be reincarnated amongst newborn members of the community. This informs the naming process of children amongst these societies. This study samples 11 hunting/gathering/fishing societies with this belief system, comparing and contrasting how the systems are of the same or different origins. Utilizing a neo-functionalist theoretical model the researchers argue that this system reinforces kinship bonds, as new members are viewed as old members returning home, and that the returned ancestors would provide strength and protection to the newborn from more malevolent spirits. The researchers theorize that this practice, in a functionalist anthropology lens, is a way to deal with constant mortality trauma, and to strengthen group cohesion amongst often mobile groups.

Using 57 cultures from the Human Relations Area Files database, this paper examines the function and effectiveness of the belief of punitive ancestors in small-scale societies. The authors found that belief in dangerous ancestral entities is widespread and common and that harm is preventable through ritualized mortuary practices. The authors concluded that the fear of ancestral spirits did not promote social cooperation or inhibit self-interest behavior, contrary to the supernatural punishment hypothesis.

The authors of this exploratory study tested predictions from five different theoretical models for the evolution of ethnoscientific expertise. They claim support for three of the models. They then compared cultural variables and their five models to three different knowledge domains: conceptual (unable to be easily observed), motor (easily observable), and medicinal. Their results indicate that their cultural transmission model is associated with the motor knowledge domain and that their proprietary knowledge model is associated with the medicinal knowledge domain.

In this paper, the author examines the effects of recent pension policies in Indonesia and Ghana on the practice of matri- or patrilocality. She also explores the relationships between these policies, marital residence, education, and elderly support. Her findings show that both matri/patrilocality and the investment parents make in their children have declined since the implementation of the pension plans.