Re-Thinking Great Basin Foragers: Prestige Hunting and Costly Signaling during the Middle Archaic Period

2005 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 695-712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly R. McGuire ◽  
William R. Hildebrandt
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Great Basin ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Costly Signaling ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Gender Division Of Labor ◽  
Costly Signaling Theory ◽  
Middle Archaic ◽  
Prehistoric Culture ◽  
Traditional Understanding

Over the last several decades, there has been an increasingly robust body of ethnographic research indicating that the sharing of meat is strongly linked to the fitness pursuits of individuals, where successful male hunters achieve various forms of prestige that ultimately lead to greater reproductive success. We argue that the effects of prestige hunting and other similar displays can be traced archaeologically in subsistence, settlement, and material culture profiles, and in the gender division of labor of even the simplest foraging societies—in this case Great Basin Middle Archaic (4500-1000 B.P.) hunter-gatherers. In contrast with optimal faraging and other efficiency models that attempt to account for such behaviors, we apply costly signaling theory to explain when foraging currencies shifted from calories to prestige among Great Basin foragers. The application of such an approach has the ability to integrate a series of disparate, subsistence- and non-subsistence-related observations regarding Great Basin lifeways and, in so doing, revise our traditional understanding of prehistoric culture change in this region.

Man the Showoff? Or the Ascendance of a Just-so-Story: A Comment on Recent Applications of Costly Signaling Theory in American Archaeology

2007 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 349-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian F. Codding ◽  
Terry L. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Great Basin ◽  
Signaling Theory ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Costly Signaling ◽  
American Archaeology ◽  
Ethnographic Studies ◽  
Costly Signaling Theory ◽  
Middle Archaic ◽  
North American Prehistory ◽  
Considerable Body

In several recent, and highly provocative papers, McGuire and Hildebrandt (Hildebrandt and McGuire 2002, 2003; McGuire and Hildebrandt 2005) have helped introduce costly signaling theory into American archaeology. While their efforts are commendable, we feel that their reinterpretations of western North American prehistory overstate the likely influence of costly signaling on the archaeological record. Only by overlooking a considerable body of ethnographic literature that indicates a more limited role for signaling are they able to characterize Great Basin and California hunters as motivated more by the pursuit of prestige than provisioning. We offer three specific challenges to their models: (1) while McGuire and Hildebrandt treat the issue as decided, the relationships among foraging, provisioning, prestige, and fitness is still actively contested among researchers; (2) while ethnographic studies suggest that some types of hunting and low-return, high-risk activities may indeed represent attempts by males to signal costly behavior, these activities contribute very little to the faunal and other residues that accumulate in the archaeological record; and (3) the theoretical underpinnings of costly signaling explicitly preclude the type of runaway positive feedback loops that Hildebrandt and McGuire implicate as the driving force behind an apparent cultural collapse in the Great Basin at the end of the Middle Archaic.

Narrated Photography

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-52
Author(s):  
Sarah Dunlop ◽  
Peter Ward
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Family Relationships ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Lived Religion ◽  
Visual Context ◽  
Textual Material ◽  
Shed Light

This article describes how a recently refined visual ethnographic research method, “narrated photography,” contributes to the study of religion. We argue that this qualitative research method is particularly useful for studies of lived religion and demonstrate this through examples drawn from a study the sacred among young Polish migrants to England. Narrated photography, which entails asking people to photograph what is personally significant to them and then to narrate the image, generates visual and textual material that mediates the subjective. Through using this method we discovered that family was considered to be sacred, both in terms of links to religious practice and a desire for a secure home which family relationships provide. Additionally, narrated photography has the potential to expand our conceptions of lived religion through the inclusion of visual material culture and the visual context of the research participants. In this case the data revealed that the Polish young people view structures within their landscape through a particularly Polish Catholic lens. These findings shed light on the religious tensions that migrants encounter in everyday life.

A Costly Signaling Theory of Hard Look Review

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Caleb Stephenson
Keyword(s):  
Signaling Theory ◽  
Costly Signaling ◽  
Costly Signaling Theory

Costly Signaling Theory

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis T. McAndrew
Keyword(s):  
Signaling Theory ◽  
Costly Signaling ◽  
Costly Signaling Theory

scholarly journals Keeping the Frontier: Steps “Towards Neolithization” in the Eastern Gulf of Finland

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1244-1257
Author(s):  
Dmitriy V. Gerasimov
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Gulf Of Finland ◽  
Forest Zone ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Sociocultural Development ◽  
The Face ◽  
Early Farming

Abstract This article is an attempt to understand the driving forces behind the process of Neolithization in the Eastern Europe Forest zone, where the consumption economy existed till the Bronze or even till the Early Iron Age. Main peculiarities of the sociocultural development in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland region (EGF) on the transition from Mesolithic to farming societies (sixth – first ka. BC) are discussed in relation to the changes in material culture, subsistence strategy, communication system and settlement pattern. The process of neolithization lasted there for several thousand years. Overview of the dynamics of the social and cultural development in the region revealed several phases of substantial changes in archeological materials (presumably reflecting considerable sociocultural changes). These changes happened later than in the neighboring territories and were preceded by dramatic environmental transformations that affected prehistoric communities in the coastal zone. For the population of the region, innovations could be considered as not “steps toward,” but “retreat in the face of” neolithization. Resistance of the population of EGF to the innovations could be based on environmental conditions that were extremely favorable for hunter–gatherers’ subsistence, but made farming (especially early farming) rather risky.

Monuments of the Hittite and Neo-Assyrian Empires During the Late Bronze and Iron Ages

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James F. Osborne
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Signaling Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Costly Signaling ◽  
Evolutionary Anthropology ◽  
Costly Signaling Theory ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
Over Time

Chapter 5 engages with the Hittite and Assyrian monuments that are some of our oldest as well as most spectacular evidence for communications. For his discussion, Osborne exploits two interpretative concepts, one that he terms “relationality,” and the other, known as “costly signaling theory,” imported from recent work in evolutionary anthropology. Relationality calls for reckoning with changes over time in how a monument communicates messages and how it is perceived; costly signaling theory serves to explain why some monuments communicate more effectively if they are large and expensive. Both concepts assist in analyzing the ideological content of the monumental royal sculptures that form Osborne’s focus.

Costly Signaling Theory in Archaeology

2019 ◽  
pp. 275-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin P. Quinn
Keyword(s):  
Signaling Theory ◽  
Costly Signaling ◽  
Costly Signaling Theory

Self-Punishment Promotes Forgiveness in the Direct and Indirect Reciprocity Contexts

2017 ◽  
Vol 120 (3) ◽  
pp. 408-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruida Zhu ◽  
Xueyi Shen ◽  
Honghong Tang ◽  
Peixia Ye ◽  
Huagen Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Signaling Theory ◽  
The Self ◽  
Moral Emotion ◽  
Costly Signaling ◽  
Indirect Reciprocity ◽  
Costly Signaling Theory ◽  
The Cost

Most previous studies regarding self-punishment have focused on the correlation between moral emotion and self-punishment. Only a few studies have attempted to understand self-punishment from the perspective of seeking forgiveness, and no study has yet directly tested whether wrongdoers’ self-punishment promotes others to forgive the wrongdoers. In three studies, the participants judged the wrongdoers’ self-punishment behaviors following an unfair allocation and reported the extent to which they forgave the wrongdoers. The results demonstrated that self-punishment did promote forgiveness in both the direct (Studies 1 and 2) and indirect reciprocity (Study 3) contexts. Consistent with costly signaling theory, the costlier the self-punishment was, the stronger the effect it had on forgiveness. Moreover, communicative self-punishment had a better effect than silent self-punishment when the cost was relatively high in the direct-reciprocity studies. These findings can guide us regarding how to address a damaged relationship via self-punishment when compensation is not feasible or acceptable.

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