The Structure and Evolutionary Significance of Hunter-Gatherer Social Organization
The School of Human Evolution and Social Change presents Mark Dyble, University College London.
Many contemporary hunter-gatherer societies have mobile, multilevel social groups in which many unrelated individuals live together. This fluid and expansive social system may be important for cumulative cultural transmission and cooperation with non-kin. In this talk, Dyble presents observational data collected during ethnographic fieldwork with Agta hunter-gatherers (Philippines) and the results of an agent-based model that explores the process of camp assortment. This work suggests that sex equality in residential decision making leads to low relatedness even if all individuals seek to live with as many kin as possible. Dyble also explores the relationship between multilevel social organization and food sharing among the Agta.
Dyble is a doctoral candidate at University College London Anthropology, where he is part of the Human Evolutionary Ecology Group and Hunter-Gatherer Resilience Project. He conducts ethnographic fieldwork in the Philippines and also works on agent-based models of social and evolutionary dynamics.