This article tests a broad hypothesis that slavery is an inevitable stage in society's economic development. The author rejects this hypothesis; he argues that there are two main types of slavery (slaves for economic capital or social capital) and each type has its own set of social and politcal determinants. Overall, the power dynamic between husbands and wives is thought to be a key predictor of slavery.

This paper investigates five different economic types of foragers: classic, transitional system, politically oriented, economically oriented, and intangibles-oriented. The author asserts that these economic types “are not mere epiphenomena of the oft-discussed social structural or political forces but, rather, are special characteristics that must be independently taken into account” (418). A myriad of environmental, subsistence, political, and social variables are examined: some differed significantly across the five economic types of foragers, but others such as famine threat, conflict, locational fixity, marital form, and postmarital residence did not differ between types.

This article focuses on the economic systems of preindustrial agricultural societies. The author conducts a cluster analysis to determine four basic types of agricultural systems: herding plus, egalitarian, individualistic, and semimarketized. He argues that these types are not delineated by social structure alone; rather, they “stand as independent entities and are worthy of more intensive study” (252).

This paper investigates the presence of gambling in preindustrial societies. Analysis shows that the presence of gambling can be predicted by region, the presence of domestic commercial money, socioeconomic inequality, and mobility combined with food supply from animal husbandry. The author suggests that the ideas underlying the Friedman-Savage utility function (1984) can be helpful in making predictions about which precapitalist societies do and which do not engage in gambling.

This study examines three theories of the origin of the plow. The author rejects the universalist approach on the basis that not all cultures that are aware of the plow adopt its use. Findings provide partial support for a theory focused on population density, particularly the importance of fallowing practices and labor productivity. The author’s own ecological approach, pointing to a culture’s staple food as a crucial variable, also receives empirical support.

This article investigates the adoption of agriculture. The author tests three possible predictors: environmental richness, population density, and division of labor by gender. Minimal support is found for these variables, and the author proposes two alternative explanations, based on diminishing returns in food production and balancing the food portfolio.

This article examines the origin of money. Anthropologists’ and economists’ theories are discussed and data supports a broad hypothesis that the existence of money is associated with level of economic development. The author further examines the emergence of internal, external, commercial and noncommercial moneys at high and low levels of economic development.

Considerable disagreement exists in regard to the origin and distribution of economic phenomena such as money, slavery, markets, exchange, and imbalanced transfers. Here the author utilizes a worldwide cross-cultural sample of 60 pre-industrial "societies" to empirically test many economic hypotheses, with a focus on distributional mechanisms and institutions.