The authors evaluated an alternative theory to the traditional productivity theory. They posit that food surplus did not precede the emergence of hierarchy, rather, the productivity advantage of cereal cultivation over tubers and roots as the catalyst for state societies. Their theory found support with a sample of societies from the present-day, Classical Antiquity, Neolithic period and pre/post Columbian Exchange. The results suggest social complexity emerged with cereal cultivation, rather than agriculture alone.

The authors evaluated an alternative theory to the traditional productivity theory. They posit that food surplus did not precede the emergence of hierarchy, rather, the productivity advantage of cereal cultivation over tubers and roots as the catalyst for state societies. Their theory found support with a sample of societies from the present-day, Classical Antiquity, Neolithic period and pre/post Columbian Exchange. The results suggest social complexity emerged with cereal cultivation, rather than agriculture alone.

The authors evaluated an alternative theory to the traditional productivity theory. They posit that food surplus did not precede the emergence of hierarchy, rather, the productivity advantage of cereal cultivation over tubers and roots as the catalyst for state societies. Their theory found support with a sample of societies from the present-day, Classical Antiquity, Neolithic period and pre/post Columbian Exchange. The results suggest social complexity emerged with cereal cultivation, rather than agriculture alone.

This article investigates factors influencing the division of labor by gender, including occupation specialization, the type of material labor involves, the presence of the plow, nomadism, and the advantage that a product may yield to either sex. Hypotheses are widely supported.

This article presents theory and hypothesis tests that suggest that the decline of women's contribution to intensive agriculture is related to increases in fertility and domestic work associated with cereal crops. Additionally, men in agricultural societies are less likely to invest time in hunting and warfare, so their contribution of agricultural labor relative to women's increases.

The article discusses the role of land ownership in natural resource management and social-ecological resilience, and explores the factors that determine ownership norms in human societies. The study tests long-standing theories from ecology, economics, and anthropology regarding the potential drivers of land ownership, including resource defensibility, subsistence strategies, population pressure, political complexity, and cultural transmission mechanisms. Using cultural and environmental data from 102 societies, the study found an increased probability of land ownership in mountainous environments and societies with higher population densities. The study also found support for the idea that neighboring societies might influence land ownership. However, there was less support for variables associated with subsistence strategies and political complexity.

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.

The authors propose that societies with a tradition of rice farming are less likely to develop a democracy than societies with a tradition of wheat farming. They base their predictions on the theory that wheat farming, as opposed to rice farming, does not require extensive community collaboration and promotes individualism, which then in turn promotes democracy. Their findings were robustly consistent with their predictions. The authors used multiple controls in their analyses, including religion, economic development, geography, and local democratic practices.

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.

Stark attempts to resituate Tylor's formulation of religion by calling into question Swanson's (1960) and Peregrine's (1996) findings that supernatural sanctions and moral behavior are consistently correlated in small-scale societies. Positing that Swanson's correlations were confounded by variables related to cultural complexity, Stark tests the association of presence of moralizing Gods with cultural complexity explicitly, as well as measures of morality in various nations as provided by the World Values Survey (1990-1991). The robust correlations across cultures noted below, as well as cross-national findings, provide support for the researcher's theory that it is particular conceptions of God rather than participation in rites and rituals which empower religion to sustain complex moral culture.