Examines whether nomadism affects the ratio of average house floor area to average household size.

This study uses macroecological approaches to test the impact of climate, social environment, inter-group borrowing and cultural history on vernacular house architecture among 1140 societies. The authors suggest that certain features will be influenced: wall materials, ground plan, roof shape, and floor placement. They use mixed binary and multinominal regressions models to test these predictions. The results strongly support that climatic drivers, cultural continuity, and inter-group borrowing predict three out of the four features: wall materials, roof shape, and floor placement. Social drivers are a strong predictor of every feature tested.

This article examines housing, mobility, and subsistence among hunter-gatherers. Several statistical associations are supported. The author uses findings to evaluate the relative complexity of societies from the archaeological record.

This study examines the association between post-marital residence patterns and dwelling size in pre-industrial societies using comparative methods and a global sample of 86 societies. The results suggest that matrilocality is associated with larger dwellings (over 65 square meters) in agricultural societies, while patrilocality is associated with smaller dwellings. The study also finds that sedentism is the single best predictor of house size. The study concludes that post-marital residence and house size evolve in a correlated fashion, which can help make reliable inferences about the social organization of prehistoric societies from archaeological records.

In the present study, Feather explores the relationship between floor plan shape and settlement permanence in order to theorize how mobility strategy influences floor plan choice. Feather incorporates the theoretical framework of previous studies by examining how floor plans and building materials vary across mobility and residential strategies, as well as social and political concerns.

This paper discusses the relationship between floor area and settlement population.

This study examines several correlates of the shape of floor plans of dwellings. Authors find that "whether a culture is settled or nomadic, the form of its family and the presence or absence of status distinctions are related to its house type, and the house types can in turn be inferred from the floor plan." Curvilinear houses are associated with polygyny and nomadism and rectilinear houses are associated with sedentarism, extended families, and status distinctions.

A restudy of Naroll's (1962) measure of dwelling floor area using theory that it is predicted by the basic needs for protection from climate and crowding. This theory is not supported by the findings but Brown posits a new average for estimating floor area in dwellings based on his sample.

This study tests the relationship between mobility and technology among foragers, with the intent of applying findings to the archaeological record. In data analysis, mobility frequency is differentiated from mobility magnitude, and technological diversity is differentiated from technological complexity. Results suggest that mobility frequency is negatively associated with technological diversity while mobility magnitude is negatively associated with technological complexity.

Authors explore the problem of data quality control, systematic error and spurious correlations possibly caused by systematic errors in global cross-cultural studies. They offer a solution (the use of control variables investigating potential sources of systematic error) and apply the technique to a cross-cultural study of the substantive correlates of societal organization and modes of marriage.