The Behavioral Ecology of Food Sharing among North Siberian Foragers

Research Objectives

Human food sharing and its relation to hominid evolution is a topic of considerable interest within anthropology. Food sharing is important for contemporary foraging societies (e.g., Freeman et al. 1998) and is a principal aspect in the theory of human evolution (Darwin 1871, Mauss 1967, Lee and Devore 1968, Alexander 1979, Tooby and Devore 1987, Lovejoy 1988, Wrangham et al. 1999). Recognizing the importance of food sharing in human sociality, a number of competing and complementary hypotheses have been proposed to describe the mechanisms that favor sharing behavior among human foragers (reviewed in Winterhalder 1997, n.d.). Recent empirical research has generated quantitative data with the goal of distinguishing among these multiple competing hypotheses for the causes of food sharing among contemporary foragers (e.g., Kaplan and Hill 1985a,1985b; Betzig and Turke 1986; Hawkes 1993; Bliege Bird and Bird 1997, Hawkes et al. 1997). Despite these advancements, the nuances and number of variables within human social interaction make it difficult to eliminate any of the hypotheses.

This project will document the behavioral ecology of hunter-gatherer sharing among Siberian foragers, test hypotheses of food sharing, and describe the relative importance of the different food-distribution mechanisms for various classes of social relationships and ecological conditions. The focus will be on three behavioral models described below: altruistic resource transfer, risk buffering, and value transfer. My earlier investigations among indigenous communities in northern Siberia described the renewed reliance upon these nonmarket distribution mechanisms with the Russian economic reforms of the 1990s (Ziker 1998a, Ziker 1998b). This unprecedented return to communal sharing and subsistence foraging by indigenous Siberians provides a unique opportunity to study nonmarket exchange of hunted and gathered foods. This research will expand the available empirical research on the topic of nonmarket intragroup exchange among human foragers, utilizing the experiences of individual hunters and their families in the community of Ust Avam, Taimyr Autonomous Region (Map 1, Appendix).

The specific objectives of this research are as follows: 1) Isolate instances of nonmarket exchange of local flesh foods in a hunting-and-gathering community. 2) Document ecological, economic, and social characteristics of the exchange. 3) Obtain self-reports about the motivations for exchange. 4) Test the patterns of exchange with the predictions from human-behavioral-ecology models. 5) Describe the relative magnitude of resource exchange through the three strategies within the foraging community.

Significance

A notable debate among anthropologists deals with the origin of human sharing economies (Blurton Jones 1984, 1987; Kaplan and Hill 1985b; Betzig and Turke 1986; Smith 1988; Halstead and O'Shea 1989; Hawkes 1993; Peterson 1993; Bliege Bird and Bird 1997; Hawkes et al. 1997). As others have suggested (Jochim 1976, Kaplan and Hill 1985b), it is likely that variation in human sharing patterns is related to socioecological contexts favoring a combination of strategies. With the likelihood of combinations of strategies, this project will, first, generate data that will test hypotheses about the function of human food sharing. As three models will be considered, the extent to which these strategies complement one another will also be investigated.