This article hypothesizes that ritual ecstasy was selected for as a way for hunter-gatherers to cope with resource uncertainty by unifying separate groups. Results support this hypothesis and suggest a relationship between resource stress and deities as well as dependence on animals and presence of zoomorphic deities.

A materialist approach is used to study the status of women in hunter-gatherer groups. Techno-ecological factors are tested as predictors of women's status.

Researchers examine the ethnographic record, sampling 82 hunter gatherer societies from the HRAF World Cultures database, for cross-cultural patterns of archaeological evidence of knowledge of astronomy and constellations. Surveying the data, researchers identified many patterns in the upper paleolithic, noting the importance of further examination of this topic.

This study explores predictors of variation in two dimensions of marital residence patterns among hunter-gatherers: 1) the tendency toward patrilocality versus matrilocality and 2) the tendency toward unilocality versus bilocality.

The present research investigates food sharing and labor sharing practices of 98 nonindustrial societies. The aims are to: 1) document the frequency and scope of sharing, and 2) test the theory that greater sharing is adaptive in societies subject to more resource stress (including natural hazards).

This article uses the Standard Cross-Cultural Samples to test the relationship between disease and economic growth among sub-Saharan African societies. The authors suggest that a higher disease prevalence limits social integration and economic development since pre-colonial times. The variable measuring economic growth is the complexity of large or impressive structures. The hypotheses are that 1) pathogen stress is negatively correlated to the presence of complex buildings, and 2) pathogen stress is positively correlated to increased ethnic diversity. The results support both hypotheses, and there are additional results, like 1) the negative correlation between pathogen stress and current income per capita and 2) the negative correlation between the increased ethnic diversity and current income per capita. Overall, this article shows the robust relationship between disease and economic development.

This study relates the type of games present in a society to the level of cultural complexity. Authors use a "game-type combination scale" that categorizes societies as having: 1) games of physical skill only; 2) games of physical skill and games of chance; and 3) games of physical skill, games of chance, and games of strategy. Results show a relationship between the game-type combination scale and indicators of cultural complexity.

This article considers the consequences of modernization. Factor analysis is used to identify four stages of modernization: 1) changes in education, government, and trade; 2) changes in health, technology, and transportation; 3) changes in family, religion, and toilet; and 4) changes in behavior. The authors then consider five trends they expect to be associated with modernization and test whether they develop over the course of the four stages. Results indicate that these 5 trends—increased cultural complexity, female status, pacification, suicide, and social stress—are associated with only the first and fourth stages.

This article investigates a cultural patterning of altered states of consciousness. The authors use an ordinal variable for a society's trance type; its four levels are 1) trance, 2) trance and possession trance, 3) possession trance, and 4) neither type. Results suggest that trance type is associated with measures of societal complexity and subsistence economy. Regional differences and the effects of diffusion are also examined.

This study asserts that the structure of work organizations is affected more by production techniques than societal complexity. Empirical analysis suggests two trends: 1) production techniques that increase the importance of workers will influence rationality in work organizations, and 2) production techniques that increase the importance of workers and societal complexity will affect the bureaucratic elements of work organizations approximately equally. These findings challenge Udy’s (1970) thesis that complex peasant societies face more challenges than less complex societies in transitioning to modern industrial work forms.