This study focuses on the development of unilineal descent, reviewing previous theories and testing additional factors to explain the relationship between unilineal descent and unilocal residence. Results suggest four key factors leading to a low association between these two variables: insufficient alternatives to unilocal residence rule, instability of communal composition, absence of sedentary settlement pattern, and small average community size. A model linking all variables from the paper is presented.

Author proposes and presents evidence in support of the theory that most societies practice virilocal or patrilocal residence (this is the "normal" pattern" and that matrilocal residence is adopted when societies migrate to an already populated area.

This book is a comprehensive analysis of many aspects of social structure including family, clan, community, kinship terminology, social organization, regulation of sex, incest taboos, and sexual choice.

The article investigates whether more socially restrictive societies provide more outlets for aggression. These authors operationalized restrictiveness with the presence of sorcery and unilineal kinship structure; the two outlets for aggression examined were occurrence of warfare and games of physical skill. Results suggest an association between these variables, though unilineal kinship structure was the better predictor of the existence of warfare.

This article uses signaling theory and tests for a relationship between costly male rites and frequency of warfare.

This book examines the difference between warless and warlike societies and attempts to determine the point at which a society becomes warlike. The author suggests that differences between warless and warlike societies are mostly organizational and hypothesizes that "unsegmented" societies, or societies that have a weaker sense of group identity and cohesion, will be more likely to be warless than "segmented" societies. Several tests are presented. Results generally support the hypothesis.

This article suggests a theory of the relationship between rules of descent and polity structure. The author suggests that “polity structure in stateless societies is a consequence of the presence or absence of cohesive factions based on lineage or family” (301). Two types of kinship ties produce different polity structures: cross-cutting ties, common in matrilineal societies, lead to political consensus; overlapping ties, common in patrilineal societies, lead to factionalism. Empirical tests support this theory.

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.

This paper "reduces Murdock's 210 categories to 30 variables, and intercorrelates and factor analyzes the variables for six world subdivisions as well as for the entire world." This article also discusses factor analysis as a method and examines the correlations more closely between the two regions that differed the most, North America and the Circum-Mediterranean.

In this article, the author argues that matrilocality is a form of social organization that is conducive to expansion in tribal societies with smaller populations. Because this organization increases internal solidarity and success in external warfare, the theory suggests that it is best suited for expansion on cultural frontiers by groups with small populations. The author supports this theory with empirical tests on 33 societies and case studies of Bantu and Austronesian expansion.