There is considerable variation both within and across societies in attitudes towards female employment outside of the household. In some societies, the dominant belief is that women should have equal opportunity to work outside the home, while in others women are strongly discouraged from working outside of the domestic sphere. Here the authors use pre-industrial ethnographic data and contemporary observations of gender inequality to test the hypothesis that cultural attitudes regarding the appropriateness of women working outside of the household are rooted in the ancestral adoption of plough cultivation. Contemporary measures of gender inequality assess variation across countries, ethnic groups, and individuals.

Using a sample of 145 African societies, the authors seek to examine the relationship between segmentary lineage organization and conflict. Presented is evidence supporting the claim that segmentary lineage societies are more prone to conflict and to conflicts larger in scale and duration. The authors aim to contribute to a better understanding of the determinants of conflict, and additionally address the applicability of the present study beyond Africa.

The goal of the paper is to demonstrate how international slave trade spread the institution of slavery throughout Africa, resulting in long-term effects of the continent’s income and political centralization. The author first estimated the travel time to slave ports from each society in the Ethnographic Atlas to determine predicting factors for the adoption of slave trade in African societies. The author reported that societies with high exposure to slave capture in the past were more likely to have the custom of slavery and the custom of polygyny. The author further suggested that slavery institutions emerged in West Africa through local, politically centralized aristocratic systems while emerging in East Africa through the preservation of wealth within the nuclear family over generations.

The study builds on a previous study with the Maasai suggesting that matrilineal descent will close that gap of competitive behavior between men and women. The author conducted a lab experiment consisting of 614 individuals representative of 27 ethnic groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the experiment, the participants completed a timed matching game. First, they played alone with the goal to complete 5 games within 5 minutes to win money. Next, they competed against an undisclosed opponent to complete the most games and to keep all of the winnings. Finally, the participants were able to choose which pay they preferred based solely on the results from the first round. This was designed to reflect competition preference and results indicated that women were less likely to engage in competition regardless of kinship system.

Derived from the evolutionary anthropology theory, this study examines the difference of importance placed on traditions and customs between cultures. The authors found that descendants from regions with less climatic stability place less emphasis on tradition and customs than those from more stable environments. The authors suggest that with climatic stability, the traditions and customs which have evolved and benefited the previous generations will be passed on to the next, therefore promoting cultural persistence.

This paper adds to a body of research which analyzes the persistence of institutional features in societies over time by testing for association between local democracy (succession by consensus among preindustrial groups) and various measures of democracy in contemporary societies. The researchers conclude that beliefs and values which perceive democracy as a viable political structure may be an important mediating mechanism in producing and maintaining democratic instututions over time.

The authors of this study integrate recent data with data on ancestral ethnic groups' exposure to the slave trade in order to examine the relationship between this historical exposure and children vaccination status against measles. They find evidence to support their hypothesis that children from mothers whose ancestors belonged to an ethnic group that exported slaves are less likely to be vaccinated against measles, theorizing that this correlation stems from distrust in medical and governmental institutions. Supporting this theory, they also find that groups historically exposed to the slave trade that have higher preference for traditional practices are even less likely to vaccinate their children against measles.

The second and third parts of this book classify the economic systems of foraging and agricultural societies in the SCCS based on correlations between their institutions of property an distribution. These economic types are then examined for relationships with other social, political, demographic, and environmental factors in order to draw tentative conclusions regarding the origins of the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. The fourth part of the book uses cross-national data to examine similar associations in industrial/service economies, and is not included here.

The researchers examine Boserup's (1970) theory that variation in traditional agricultural practices shape gender roles by examining the relationship between historical plough use and contemporary fertility rates and preferential attitudes towards fertility. Contrary to expectation, tests show a negative relationship between plough use and both of these variables. The authors theorize that since children are less capable of performing the intensive labor required by plough agriculture compared to hoe agriculture, adoption of the plough deincentivized increased fertility and reduced its value among agriculturalists.

This article uses two dependent variables: acceptance of polygyny (the rules) and and the percentage of women in polygynous marriages (the behavior). The rules of marriage are best predicted by social structural variables (e.g. warfare, fraternal interest groups) whereas actual marriage behaviors are best predicted by economic and ecological variables (e.g. climate zone). Deemphasizing exclusively reproductive or economic explanations for polygyny, the authors find polygyny is related to male-oriented kin groups, territorial expansion and migration, and marrying war captives. Polygyny is thus thought to have a stratifying effect on women and is ultimately a detriment to female status.