Brian Wood: Stanford Department of Anthropology

In this research, we use newly collected data describing how Hadza men’s foods were produced, shared, and consumed in order to elucidate the general motivations underlying, and consequences of, Hadza male foraging strategies. We test predictions of the showoff, costly signaling, household provisioning, and kin provisioning hypotheses, finding strong support for the latter two. We find that Hadza men foraged for a range of food-types, including fruit, honey, small game, and large game. Our data indicate that men shared the foods they produced in ways that directly benefitted their own households as well as their consaguineal and affinal kin living in other households. Our work indicates that large game hunting was one important element of men’s foraging strategies but not an exclusive specialization. These results differ from prior investigations of the Hadza, in which it was argued that men specialized in hunting large game for its status benefits, rather than pursuing other types of foods and more effectively feeding their households. We discuss how and perhaps why our studies differ. We also explore how camp demographics, seasonality, and men’s marital status influenced their food production and sharing.