Latest Past Events

Debra Martin – CANCELLED — Ancient Bones, Ancestral Bodies: Interpretive Approaches to Violence and Behavior

Debra Martin: University of Nevada, Las VegasViolence (lethal and nonlethal) is often associated with social spheres of influence and power connected to daily life such as subsistence intensification, specialization, resources, climate, population density, territorial protection and presence of immigrants, to name just a few. By using fine-grained biocultural analyses that interrogate trauma data in particular […]

Tim Shields – The Demonstrability of What You Have Not Done (But Could Have) Matters In Trust-based Exchange

Tim Shields: Chapman UniversityWe describe results of a study in trust-based exchange that supports the proposition that humans perceive intention not only through what others do but also through what others choose not to do. Crucial to this proposition is the notion that trust-based exchanges entail decision dilemmas where mutually exclusive goals are traded off […]

Erik Gjesfjeld – Social and Technological Responses to Risk and Uncertainty: A Material Culture Approach

Erik Gjesfjeld: UCLAIn both the past and present, human populations are consistently presented with unpredictable situations. Behavioral responses to these situations are often heavily mediated by our degree of knowledge (uncertainty) about the variability in outcomes (risk). Using social network analysis as well as a novel macro-evolutionary method for examining the mode and tempo of […]