This article proposes that ground plans may be used as a criterion for determining the relative permanence of settlement patterns in archaelogical societies. Results suggest that impermanent settlements and small community size are significantly associated with circular ground plans and that permanent settlements with larger community sizes are significantly associated with rectangular ground plans.

This study proposes ways in which the environment may affect behavioral and psychocultural processes. Results provide moderate support for a relationship between climate and emotional expressiveness.

This paper tests for a correlation between primary house shapes and preferences for curved or straight lines in art.

Researchers examined both why so many language are spoken today, and why they are so unevenly distributed geographically. Instead of looking at correlative tests, this study uses a process-based simulation model that attempted to predict both the number or precolonial languages in Australia as well as the number of languages per unit of land. The model was based upon three basic assumptions: 1) humans fill unoccupied spaces; 2) rainfall limits population density; 3) groups divide after reaching a maximum population. While researchers used the model strictly on the Australia continent, it was able to correctly explain 56% of spatial variation in language richness, and predict the total number of languages across the continent. The accuracy of this model concludes that climatic conditions and changes in group size are important factors in shaping language diversity patterns and therefore global human cultural diversity.

This paper examines the enormous variation in linguistic diversity among Pacific Islands by testing its relationship with various environmental variables put forth in several common theories of language richness. The researchers identify variables relating to land area and island isolation as accounting for about half of variation in linguistic diversity, suggesting that the other half is a result of complex social factors.

In this article, the authors seek to determine cross-culturally valid predictors of dominant types of human subsistence around the world. They did this by formulating multiple models that incorporate different combinations of environmental, geographic, and social factors. These models were then used to test various hypotheses posed throughout the anthropological literature surrounding factors that determine dominant subsistence strategies.

This article seeks to reevaluate the widespread assumption that hunter-gatherers lack the longevity that people in the modern, industrialized world enjoy. Through modeling life expectancy, mortality, and other demographic trends among extant hunter-gatherer, gatherer-horticulturalists, and horticulturalists societies they are able to challenge this belief. The authors conclude that longevity is a "novel feature of Homo sapiens" and that seven decades seems to be the natural lifespan of a human.

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

This book investigates individual and group responses to death and the problems that death can create in a society. Several hypotheses regarding grief and mourning, as well as their variation with other societal variables, are supported with cross-cultural tests.

This study is a comprehensive analysis of female and male genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C and MGM/C) practices, including their history and socio-ecological correlates, using a phylogenetic cross-cultural framework. It employed two global ethnographic samples, the Ethnographic Atlas (EA) and the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS), and two subsets of the phylogeny (supertree) of human populations based on genetic and linguistic data, to investigate the variables that may have led to the introduction of these practices, and to determine where and when they may have originated. The study suggests that MGM/C probably originated in polygynous societies with separate residence for co-wives, supporting a mate-guarding function, and that FGM/C likely originated subsequently and almost exclusively in societies already practicing MGM/C, where it may have become a signal of chastity. Both practices are believed to have originated multiple times, some as early as in the mid-Holocene (5,000–7,000 years ago). The study posits that GM/C co-evolves with and may help maintain fundamental social structures and that the high fitness costs of FGM/C are offset by social benefits, such as enhanced marriageability and social capital.