Life Is Risky: Human Behavioral Ecological Approaches to Variable Outcomes

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Life Is Risky: Human Behavioral Ecological Approaches to Variable Outcomes " at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Every human decision involves an aspect of risk. As such, it is critically important that anthropologists develop a general framework for defining and explaining risk-sensitive behavior. Human behavioral ecology (HBE) has long been interested in understanding the conditions under which individuals should be risk-averse, risk-prone, or risk-indifferent. HBE has made great strides in risk-oriented research by formally defining risk as probabilistic variance and seeking to explain risk-preferences from an explicit cost/benefit framework. Nonetheless, the last attempt to synthesize an HBE approach to risk was Elizabeth Cashdan’s landmark edited volume *“Risk and Uncertainty in Tribal and Peasant Economies” published in 1991. We believe, 30 years later, it is time again to synthesize HBE approaches to risk. This organized session will highlight current archaeological investigations into risk. Our goal is to provide an explicit—and hopefully consistent—HBE framework for understanding risk and to discuss the ways in which risk-sensitive research has changed over the last several decades.

Other Keywords
Human Behavioral Ecology • Theory • Ethnography/Ethnoarchaeology • Experimental Archaeology • Trade and exchange • Storage • Hohokam • Fremont • Archaic • Fuel

Geographic Keywords
United States of America (Country) • North America (Continent) • USA (Country) • Arizona (State / Territory) • Utah (State / Territory) • Nevada (State / Territory) • California (State / Territory) • North America: California and Great Basin • Idaho (State / Territory) • Oregon (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-9 of 9)

  • Documents (9)
Documents
  • Beyond Processors: Leadership, Risk, and Decision Making among Women in Anarchic Societies (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon Tushingham.

    This is an abstract from the "Life Is Risky: Human Behavioral Ecological Approaches to Variable Outcomes " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Anarchic societies resist despotic rule and centralized political power. Such systems are far from chaotic and developed and prospered throughout much of western North America. Both human behavioral ecology (HBE) and anarchist theory offer explanatory frameworks for understanding heterarchy as well as the...

  • Examining the Trade-Off between Food Acquisition and Violence Avoidance: Population-Level Effects and Variability in Risk-Preference (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Weston McCool.

    This is an abstract from the "Life Is Risky: Human Behavioral Ecological Approaches to Variable Outcomes " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Resource procurement and the avoidance of interpersonal violence are critical features of human survival strategies. Yet these features are often competing, requiring individuals to make trade-offs in order to maximize fitness. Recent decades of research have shown violence to be a pervasive, albeit variable,...

  • The Interactive Effects of Risk and Climatic Variation on Food Storage Behavior (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Yaworsky.

    This is an abstract from the "Life Is Risky: Human Behavioral Ecological Approaches to Variable Outcomes " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Risk, or variation in outcomes, is an inherent part of the human condition and can result in the adoption of complex behavioral patterns that seemingly contradict expectations of human rationality. Thus, complex patterns of behavioral adaptation may require considering how risk constrains or encourages...

  • Limb for Limb: Risk and Firewood Acquisition in the Southwestern United States (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kate Magargal.

    This is an abstract from the "Life Is Risky: Human Behavioral Ecological Approaches to Variable Outcomes " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There are numerous dynamics of risk associated with acquiring any resource. The risk of investing time unsuccessfully, of incurring too great an opportunity cost, and of dangers to life or limb when venturing forth all come into play. How do these different types of risk trade off and how does a human in need of...

  • Monetized Trade and Correlated Risk in Central California (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Gregory Burns.

    This is an abstract from the "Life Is Risky: Human Behavioral Ecological Approaches to Variable Outcomes " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Isotopic evidence suggests use of shell bead money in central California developed during a time of high environmental uncertainty and decreasing social trust. Monetized exchange likely played a role in risk mitigation while maintaining independence of small groups. As a utility maximizing form of sharing, the...

  • Resource Acquisition Risk as a Driver of Subsistence Transitions (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Codding. Kate Magargal. Douglas Bird. Rebecca Bliege Bird. David Zeanah.

    This is an abstract from the "Life Is Risky: Human Behavioral Ecological Approaches to Variable Outcomes " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Explaining major subsistence transitions in human prehistory requires an evaluation of the costs and benefits past people experienced. All too often, these trade-offs are explored solely by analysis of central tendency (i.e., mean returns), without exploring the distribution of possible outcomes. Here we explore...

  • Risk Seeking and Risk Mitigation in the Argentine Andes (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Morgan. Gustavo Neme. Adolfo Gil. Clara Otaola. Miguel Giardina.

    This is an abstract from the "Life Is Risky: Human Behavioral Ecological Approaches to Variable Outcomes " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Using the Z-score model, we evaluate the costs and benefits of risk-seeking behaviors, and the means by which risks were mitigated, at El Indígeno, a massive high-altitude residential site in the south-central Andes. Our model suggests that though climatic amelioration during the site’s main period of occupation...

  • The Role of Future Discounting in Subsistence Decisions: The Case of Hohokam Agave Farming (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Pailes. Natalia Martínez-Tagüeña.

    This is an abstract from the "Life Is Risky: Human Behavioral Ecological Approaches to Variable Outcomes " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation will investigate the relevance of future discounting behavior to precolonial subsistence decisions by examining *Agave sp. bajada cultivation among the Hohokam of southern Arizona during the Classic period, AD 1150–1450. The Hohokam Classic period was tumultuous and included a variety of social...

  • Women’s Time Allocation Trade-Offs in an Intensive Foraging Economy Led to Future Discounting Reproductive Behavior (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandra Greenwald.

    This is an abstract from the "Life Is Risky: Human Behavioral Ecological Approaches to Variable Outcomes " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Population growth during the Medieval Climatic Anomaly (MCA) (1100–600 BP) and into the Late period (~600–180 BP) in Central California drove increased intensification and reliance on low-ranking, low-risk food sources, primarily acorn and small seeds inland, and shellfish and small schooling fish on the bay...