Wood (2006) Foraging goals among the Hadza

Wood, B. (2006). Prestige or provisioning? A test of foraging goals among the Hadza. Current Anthropology, 47, 383-387.

This paper essentially replicates Wood & Hill's (2000) study, but here with the Hadza (of Tanzania) rather than the Ache (of Paraguay). It also queried both men and women. Basically, they were asked:

You come across two camps of Hadza, one of which you (and your family, if any) will join for 2 months. Both are identical and have unmarried young women and other male hunters. Camp A has better hunters, Camp B has poor hunters. Which do you choose?

This tests two hypotheses: 

1. Provisioning hypothesis. Individuals should choose Camp A because is means more food for themselves and their family.
2. Prestige hypotheses: Individuals should choose Camp B because they will be relatively more prestigious and be better equipped to compete for women. 

Among the Ache, men without dependent children chose Camp B, while men with dependent children chose Camp A. This effect was not found among the Hadza. Pretty much everyone wanted to be in Camp A, including 100% of the women interviewed, as predicted, as well as all the unmarried men. Some married men did choose Camp B, some for reasons of prestige ("I will go there to teach them to hunt") some with a "desire" to help ("The camp right now needs lots of help") and some with other motives - apparently camps with lots of good hunters tend to be bigger and noiser ("Camps with lots of meat have lots of noise and fighting" and "They will like e and there is less noise and bickering"). 

Importantly, this result shows little conflict of interest between the sexes in terms of prestige and provisioning related to hunting.

Wood & Hill (2000) "Showing off" hypothesis

Wood, B., & Hill, K. (2000). A test of the "showing-off" hypothesis with Ache hunters. Current Anthropology, 41, 124-125. 

This is a test of Hawkes (1991) claim that the main foraging goal of Ache huters it to “show off” and be perceived as relatively fit (big fish in a small pond), rather than to maximize food production. This study tested this hypothesis and showed support for it, but only if the men are uncommitted and have no dependent children. Otherwise, they prefer to maximize food production.

Hypothetical scenarios were posed to Ache hunters deciding which band to join:

- Join Band A with better hunters (and maximize available food) or 

- Join Band B with worse hunters (and mazimize opportunity to “show off” by being a better hunter).

Men with dependent offspring chose Band A (16/17). “I always choose to live with the good hunters.”

Men without dependent offspring chose Band B (6/7). An older man with adult children and independent said he would choose Band B because of the unmarried young women. Both bands had equal numbers of available women, so this choice reflects desire to outshine other males.  Interaction with unmarried young man:

Interviewer: What is good about that group?
Man: The daregi.
Interviewer: What would you do in this group?
Man: I would go to hunt [implying that he would bring in a lot of meat].

“One interesting aspect of our results is that the men without dependent offspring who chose the showing-off strategy included both young unmarried men (4) and older men with spouses who had either not produced children (1) or whose children were grown and indepen- dent (2). This finding may reflect a scenario in which young men start their reproductive careers as show-offs to acquire mates but once having produced offspring be- gin strategizing to provision. Then, when their children are grown or their spouses cannot produce children, they return to the mating effort of a showing-off strategy.”