B Winterhalder
Biographic Data
| ID | 821 |
|---|---|
| NAME | B Winterhalder |
| GIVEN NAMES | B |
| FAMILY NAME | Winterhalder |
| SIGNATURE | WINTERHALDER B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Davis |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6560-3302 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 53 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 404 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 53 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1974 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Endurance pursuit hunting among recent foragers and its relevance for hominin locomotor evolution
Textual analysis of 425 cases of endurance pursuit hunts (EPHs) found in ethnohistoric and ethnographic sources reveals the diversity, extent, and effectiveness of the endurance pursuit tactic. Endurance pursuits involve persistently running after an encountered animal, often for hours, until it can be subdued, the tactic frequently involving bouts of walking and tracking. Building on this definition, we assess the plausibility of five hypotheses…
Ethnography and ethnohistory support the efficiency of hunting through endurance running in humans
Why Do Humans Hunt Cooperatively
We analyze a new ethnographic and ethnohistoric database of quantitative cases (n = 139) and qualitative information on a neglected form of forager subsistence—communal drive hunts (CDHs)—using a human behavioral ecology perspective. Among our key findings are that (i) in specific contexts, CDHs achieve higher return rates or lower odds of failure than encounter hunting; (ii) CDHs increase the rate of success for hunting large ungulates that clus…
Racial Disparities in Police Use of Deadly Force Against Unarmed Individuals Persist After Appropriately Benchmarking Shooting Data on Violent Crime Rates
Cesario et al. argue that benchmarking the relative counts of killings by police on relative crime rates, rather than relative population sizes, generates a measure of racial disparity in the use of lethal force that is unbiased by differential crime rates. Their publication, however, lacked any formal derivation showing that their benchmarking methodology has the statistical properties required to establish such a claim. We use the causal model …
Ethnographic Observations on the Role of Domestic Dogs in the Lowland Tropics of Belize with Emphasis on Crop Protection and Subsistence Hunting
Special Issue on Dogs – Introduction
Deconstructing Hunting Returns
The Ideal Free Distribution, Food Production, and the Colonization of Oceania
Islands in Oceania were some of the last habitable land masses on earth to be colonized by humans. Current archaeological evidence suggests that these islands were colonized episodically rather than continuously, and that bursts of migration were followed by longer periods of sedentism and population growth. The decision to colonize isolated, unoccupied islands and archipelagos was complex and dependent on a variety of social, technological and e…
Behavioral Ecology and the Transition from Hunting and Gathering to Agriculture
Author(s): Winterhalder, B; Kennett, DJ | Editor(s): Kennett, Douglas J; Winterhalder, Bruce
The Exchequer’s Guide to Population Ecology and Resource Exploitation in the Agrarian State
We adopt an imagined exchequer, the functionary responsible in an early polity for securing resources from its agrarian subjects, and we develop a feature-rich demographic and environmental model to explore the population ecology of agricultural production in the context of population growth, Malthusian constraints and economic exploitation. The model system allows us to (i) identify and characterize a peak of surplus production early in populati…
Every Tradesman Must Also Be a Merchant”
Natural Selection and Decision-Making
This chapter provides an introduction to the main theoretical principles employed throughout this volume. It presents an overview of contemporary evolutionary theory, emphasizing the explanatory logic of natural selection. The chapter describes the complexities imposed by the hierarchical organization of living systems and the techniques currently used to analyze the evolution of social interactions. It examines selected theoretical and methodolo…
Evolutionary Ecology and the Social Sciences
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides a broad overview of the questions addressed by evolutionary ecology with respect to human behavior. It relates evolutionary ecology to the approaches and concerns of social science generally. The book provides a summary of the basic theoretical principles, and compares these in some detail to selected social science fram…
The Classic Period Maya transition from an ideal free to an ideal despotic settlement system at the polity of Uxbenká
Large mammal biomass predicts the changing distribution of hunter-gatherer settlements in mid-late Holocene Alaska
Evidence for quantity–quality trade-offs, sex-specific parental investment, and variance compensation in colonized Agta foragers undergoing demographic transition
A hierarchical bayesian analysis of parasite prevalence and sociocultural outcomes
OBJECTIVES: We conduct a revaluation of the Thornhill and Fincher research project on parasites using finely-resolved geographic data on parasite prevalence, individual-level sociocultural data, and multilevel Bayesian modeling. In contrast to the evolutionary psychological mechanisms linking parasites to human behavior and cultural characteristics proposed by Thornhill and Fincher, we offer an alternative hypothesis that structural racism and di…
Production risk, inter-annual food storage by households and population-level consequences in seasonal prehistoric agrarian societies
Using complementary behavioural and population ecological models, we explore the role of production risk, normal surplus and inter-annual food storage in the adaptations of societies dependent on seasonal agriculture. We find that (a) household-level, risk-sensitive adaption to unpredictable environmental variation in annual agricultural yields is a sufficient explanation for the origins of normal agrarian surplus and, consequently, of household-…
A Test of Ideal Free Distribution Predictions Using Targeted Survey and Excavation on California’s Northern Channel Islands
Frequency-Dependent Social Transmission and the Interethnic Transfer of Female Genital Modification in the African Diaspora and Indigenous Populations of Colombia
Epidemics in Ming and Qing China
Population and Environmental Correlates of Maize Yields in Mesoamerica
Terminal Long Count Dates and the Disintegration of Classic Period Maya Polities
Analyses of terminal long count dates from stone monuments in the Maya lowlands have played a central role in characterizing the rise and “collapse” of polities during the Late and Terminal Classic periods (a.d.730–910). Previous studies propose a directional abandonment of large political centers from west-to-east. We retest the west-to-east hypothesis, using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial statistics to analyze an updated datas…
The Population Ecology of Despotism
Effects on Household Labor of Temporary Out-migration by Male Household Heads in Nicaragua and Peru
Risk-senstive adaptive tactics
A simple model of technological intensification
Hunter-Gatherer Foraging Strategies
On Population, Foraging Efficiency, and Plant Domestication
Gifts given, gifts taken
Four Neglected Concepts with a Role to Play in Explaining the Origins of Agriculture
Explanations of the socioeconomic changes accompanying the transition from foraging through mixed economies to societies that take up full-time agriculture will entail concepts of risk, discounting, economies of scale, and transaction costs. The spatial form and temporal scale of agricultural production fundamentally change the parameters of risk management. Delays between investment decisions and consumption of yields grow in duration and signif…
Ecological Theory and Ethnic Differentiation Among Human Populations [and Comments and Replies]
The formation and maintenance of distinct ethnic populations within multiethnic communities is proposed to be functionally equivalent to the process of species diversification in multispecies communities. This paper suggests that while these processes operate through different selective mechanisms-one social and the other genetic-ethnic boundaries, like species boundaries, function to regulate the behavior of potentially competing populations in …
Work, Resources and Population in Foraging Societies
Anthropological views on the labour effort required of hunter-gatherers have flip-flopped between stereotypic positions depicting either very limited subsistence work or long exertion. A computer simulation using evolutionary and population ecology models shows that at equilibrium foraging efficiency is a declining function of work effort, whereas population density responds to work effort by first increasing and then decreasing. This and other f…
Terminal Long Count Dates and the Disintegration of Classic Period Maya Polities
Analyses of terminal long count dates from stone monuments in the Maya lowlands have played a central role in characterizing the rise and “collapse” of polities during the Late and Terminal Classic periods (a.d.730–910). Previous studies propose a directional abandonment of large political centers from west-to-east. We retest the west-to-east hypothesis, using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial statistics to analyze an updated datas…
A Test of Ideal Free Distribution Predictions Using Targeted Survey and Excavation on California’s Northern Channel Islands
The Population Ecology of Despotism
Effects on Household Labor of Temporary Out-migration by Male Household Heads in Nicaragua and Peru
Deconstructing Hunting Returns
Epidemics in Ming and Qing China
Every Tradesman Must Also Be a Merchant”
Hominid paleoecology
Some paleonanthropologists invoke the competitive exclusion principle programmatically in support of a single‐species (or lineage) hypothesis of hominid evolution. Others apparently accept the association between competitive exclusion and a single species view, and develop multi‐species interpretations using only taxonomic concepts. This paper demonstrates that the competitive exclusion principle itself is too assumption‐bound to be appropriate f…
Household Economics and Hominid Origins [and Comments and Reply]
Between 4 and 6 million years ago forces were gathering which transformed a group of quadrupedal individual foraging protohominids into one or more species of bipedal food-sharing hominids. Recently, several scientific subfields have contributed new insights and new pieces of information which, when fitted together by different scholars, present us with a confusing picture of how the transformation might have taken place. This paper examines some…
On the Logic and Application of Optimal Foraging Theory
Hominid paleoecology and competitive exclusion
Fossil evidence from the Plio-Pleistocene of Africa apparently has confirmed a multi-lineage interpretation of early hominid evolution. Empirical refutation of the single species hypothesis must now be matched to the evolutionary ecology theory, which can underwrite taxonomic assessment and help to explain sympatric hominid coexistence. This paper contributes to that goal by reassessing the ecological rationale provided for the single-species hyp…
Why Do Humans Hunt Cooperatively
We analyze a new ethnographic and ethnohistoric database of quantitative cases (n = 139) and qualitative information on a neglected form of forager subsistence—communal drive hunts (CDHs)—using a human behavioral ecology perspective. Among our key findings are that (i) in specific contexts, CDHs achieve higher return rates or lower odds of failure than encounter hunting; (ii) CDHs increase the rate of success for hunting large ungulates that clus…
Ethnography and ethnohistory support the efficiency of hunting through endurance running in humans
Behavioral and Other Human Ecologies
This paper has three goals: (1) to define the anthropological subfield of human behavioral ecology (HBE) and characterize recent progress in this research tradition; (2) to address Joseph's (2000) critique of HBE from the perspective of an advocate of that field; and (3) to suggest features that make for effective criticism of research traditions. (1) HBE attempts to understand intra- and inter-societal diversity in human behavior as the product …
The Exchequer’s Guide to Population Ecology and Resource Exploitation in the Agrarian State
We adopt an imagined exchequer, the functionary responsible in an early polity for securing resources from its agrarian subjects, and we develop a feature-rich demographic and environmental model to explore the population ecology of agricultural production in the context of population growth, Malthusian constraints and economic exploitation. The model system allows us to (i) identify and characterize a peak of surplus production early in populati…
Frequency-Dependent Social Transmission and the Interethnic Transfer of Female Genital Modification in the African Diaspora and Indigenous Populations of Colombia
Dung as an essential resource in a highland Peruvian community
Environmental analysis in human evolution and adaptation research
Hominid paleoecology
Some paleonanthropologists invoke the competitive exclusion principle programmatically in support of a single‐species (or lineage) hypothesis of hominid evolution. Others apparently accept the association between competitive exclusion and a single species view, and develop multi‐species interpretations using only taxonomic concepts. This paper demonstrates that the competitive exclusion principle itself is too assumption‐bound to be appropriate f…
Hominid paleoecology and competitive exclusion
Fossil evidence from the Plio-Pleistocene of Africa apparently has confirmed a multi-lineage interpretation of early hominid evolution. Empirical refutation of the single species hypothesis must now be matched to the evolutionary ecology theory, which can underwrite taxonomic assessment and help to explain sympatric hominid coexistence. This paper contributes to that goal by reassessing the ecological rationale provided for the single-species hyp…
Ecological Theory and Ethnic Differentiation Among Human Populations [and Comments and Replies]
The formation and maintenance of distinct ethnic populations within multiethnic communities is proposed to be functionally equivalent to the process of species diversification in multispecies communities. This paper suggests that while these processes operate through different selective mechanisms-one social and the other genetic-ethnic boundaries, like species boundaries, function to regulate the behavior of potentially competing populations in …
Hunter-Gatherer Foraging Strategies
Household Economics and Hominid Origins [and Comments and Reply]
Between 4 and 6 million years ago forces were gathering which transformed a group of quadrupedal individual foraging protohominids into one or more species of bipedal food-sharing hominids. Recently, several scientific subfields have contributed new insights and new pieces of information which, when fitted together by different scholars, present us with a confusing picture of how the transformation might have taken place. This paper examines some…
On the Logic and Application of Optimal Foraging Theory
Diet choice, risk, and food sharing in a stochastic environment
The population ecology of hunter-gatherers and their prey
Work, Resources and Population in Foraging Societies
Anthropological views on the labour effort required of hunter-gatherers have flip-flopped between stereotypic positions depicting either very limited subsistence work or long exertion. A computer simulation using evolutionary and population ecology models shows that at equilibrium foraging efficiency is a declining function of work effort, whereas population density responds to work effort by first increasing and then decreasing. This and other f…
On Population, Foraging Efficiency, and Plant Domestication
Social foraging and the behavioral ecology of intragroup resource transfers
Two chimpanzees stalk, isolate, and kill a red colobus monkey. An attendant primatologist notes that parts of the prey are relinquished selectively to onlooking scroungers (Fig. 1). A human forager returns to camp mid-afternoon with a freshly killed, medium-sized ungulate. Later in the day, an ethnographer observes that shared portions of the animal have found their way into the cooking pots of most or all of those in the small band. Examining a …
Gifts given, gifts taken
Risk-senstive adaptive tactics
Analyzing adaptive strategies
Analyzing adaptive strategies
Intragroup Resource Transfers
The notion that early hominid social groups might have engaged in routine sharing of meat or other highly valued food-stuffs apparently is seen by paleoanthropologists as a bit romantic and wholly naive. The site-level empiricism that fueled Isaac’s (1978a, 1978b, 1984) promotion of the idea has given way to taphonomic caution (Binford 1985). Alternative interpretations—such as the putative living sites may have been stone caches used briefly for…
Risk-sensitive fertility
Demographic consequences of unpredictability in fertility outcomes
Child survival is probabilistic, but the unpredictability in family formation and completed family size has been neglected in the fertility literature. In many societies, ending the family cycle with too few or too many surviving offspring entails serious social, economic, or fitness consequences. A model of risk‐ (or variance‐) sensitive adaptive behavior that addresses long‐term fertility outcomes is presented. The model shows that under condit…
Behavioral and Other Human Ecologies
This paper has three goals: (1) to define the anthropological subfield of human behavioral ecology (HBE) and characterize recent progress in this research tradition; (2) to address Joseph's (2000) critique of HBE from the perspective of an advocate of that field; and (3) to suggest features that make for effective criticism of research traditions. (1) HBE attempts to understand intra- and inter-societal diversity in human behavior as the product …
The half of it
A simple model of technological intensification
Analogy Versus Behavioral Ecology in the Study of Human Evolution
In a recent critique published in this journal (Ben-Dor, M. & R. Barkai, 2026, Paleolithic dietary flexibility? Methodological considerations in analogy-based reconstructions of Paleolithic energetic returns, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 33, article 47, pp. 1–27), the authors characterize behavioral ecology approaches to the study of foraging efficiency as being fundamentally constrained by their reliance on conventional analogy-ba…
Four Neglected Concepts with a Role to Play in Explaining the Origins of Agriculture
Explanations of the socioeconomic changes accompanying the transition from foraging through mixed economies to societies that take up full-time agriculture will entail concepts of risk, discounting, economies of scale, and transaction costs. The spatial form and temporal scale of agricultural production fundamentally change the parameters of risk management. Delays between investment decisions and consumption of yields grow in duration and signif…
Biology (34 works) · Geography (31 works) · Ecology (29 works) · Sociology (27 works) · Population (19 works) · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (16 works) · Foraging (16 works) · Demography (15 works) · Economics (15 works) · Ecology (14 works)