Gendered Movement Ecology and Landscape Use in Hadza Hunter-Gatherers

Authors

• Brian M. Wood, University of California, Los Angeles
• Jacob A. Harris, Arizona State University
• David A. Raichlen, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
• Herman Pontzer, Duke University
• Katherine Sayre, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
• Amelia Sancilio, University of Chicago
• Colette Berbesque, University of Roehampton
• Alyssa N. Crittenden, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow
• Audax Mabulla, University of Dar es Salaam
• Richard McElreath, Max Planck Institutefor Evolutionary Anthropology
• Elizabeth Cashdan, University of Utah
• James Holland Jones, Stanford University

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-4-2021

Publication Title

Nature Human Behaviour

First page number:

1

Last page number:

21

Abstract

Understanding how gendered economic roles structure space use is critical to evolutionary models of foraging behaviour, social organization and cognition. Here, we examine hunter-gatherer spatial behaviour on a very large scale, using GPS devices worn by Hadza foragers to record 2,078 person-days of movement. Theory in movement ecology suggests that the density and mobility of targeted foods should predict spatial behaviour and that strong gender differences should arise in a hunter-gatherer context. As predicted, we find that men walked further per day, explored more land, followed more sinuous paths and were more likely to be alone. These data are consistent with the ecology of male- and female-targeted foods and suggest that male landscape use is more navigationally challenging in this hunter-gatherer context. Comparisons of Hadza space use with space use data available for non-human primates suggest that the sexual division of labour likely co-evolved with increased sex differences in spatial behaviour and landscape use.

Disciplines

Social and Cultural Anthropology

File Format

pdf

File Size

4100 KB

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Repository Citation

Wood, B. M., Harris, J. A., Raichlen, D. A., Pontzer, H., Sayre, K., Sancilio, A., Berbesque, C., Crittenden, A. N., Mabulla, A., McElreath, R., Cashdan, E., Jones, J. H. (2021). Gendered Movement Ecology and Landscape Use in Hadza Hunter-Gatherers. Nature Human Behaviour 1-21.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-01002-7