Are kubo hunters ‘show offs’?

doi:10.1016/0162-3095(93)90018-D

Ethology and Sociobiology

Volume 14, Issue 1, January 1993, Pages 53-70

https://doi.org/10.1016/0162-3095(93)90018-D Get rights and content

Abstract

The ‘show off’ hypothesis proposed by K. Hawkes, and tested using data on Ache foragers, makes important connections between food resource choice, reproductive strategies, and food sharing by human foragers. We test predictions derived from that hypothesis concerning contexts of meat acquisition, association between individuals, mobility, and reproductive success among Kubo hunter-horticulturalists of the interior lowlands of Papua New Guinea. Application of the hypothesis to both the Kubo and Ache cases is questioned. Differences between Kubo males in means and variances of returns from hunting arise as a consequence of differential target specialization; they do not map onto variation in reproductive success.

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Citation Excerpt :
This suggests that the idea of ‘big game specialization’ as commonly envisioned by archaeologists should be reframed to account for specializations such as these. In the ethnographic record, big game specialization often only applies to a few people - not the entire group (also see Dwyer and Minnegal, 1993; Neitschmann, 1973; Stearman, 1989). In the case of forest foragers, most hunters engage in other types of hunting activities on a daily basis and most of these activities (but not all) are associated with a lower risk of hunting failure (Lupo and Schmitt, 2005).
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^∗: The University of Queensland granted periods of leave to P.D.; we were affiliated with the Biology Department, University of Papua New Guinea, and the Papua New Guinea National Museum, and were awarded research visas by the Papua New Guinea Government. We thank Kristen Hawkes for the stimulus provided by her paper, Hamish McCallum for discussion of mean-variance relationships, anonymous referees for their challenging comments, and the Kubo people with whom we lived.

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Are kubo hunters ‘show offs’?

Abstract

Ethology and Sociobiology

Ethology and Sociobiology

Variability in the Abundance of Plant and Animal Species

Nature

Hunting and Gathering in Tropical Rain Forest: Is it Possible?

American Anthropologist

Redistribution: Equity or Exploitation?

The Pigs that Ate the Garden: A Human Ecology from Papua New Guinea

Hunting in Lowland Tropical Rainforest: Towards a Model of Non-Agricultural Subsistence

Human Ecology

Why do Men Hunt? Benefits for Risky Choices

Why Hunters Gather: Optimal Foraging and the Ache of Eastern Paraguay

American Ethnologist

Ache at the Settlement: Contrasts between Farming and Foraging

Human Ecology