Hi,
This research deals with the classical anthropological question of
food sharing among hunters and gatherers. There are a number of
hypotheses being discussed within the field. This study is relevant
for two models, namely kinship cooperation and reciprocity. The
kinship model predicts greater assymetry in sharing with increasing
proximity of relatedness between the partners. The reciprocity model
predicts that sharing is contigent on returned acts of sharing. I have
a small sample of meals I observed and documented among Dolgan and
Nganasan hunter-gatherers in a remote community in the Siberian
Arctic. I documented approximately 800 meals in 1995 and 1996. Of
these, 145 meals included members of more than one household. I am
including the raw data in this message. These raw data are: the number
of times household x hosted household y, the number of times household
y hosted household x, and the average household relatedness of
household x and y. The relatedness figure was calculated as the
average relatedness (r) of each pair of individuals in each household.
[The variable 'r'is used in biology to represent the likelihood that
two individuals share a gene at a given locus.]
The main question I have is: with these data is it possible to
determine statistically whether or not average household r predicts x
to y sharing better than y to x reciprocity, or vice versa. The sample
is highly skewed because of the fact that, even though the households
represented are the ones in my sample that had the highest number of
sharing partners, not every household hosted each other.
X/Y code X to Y Y to X Average household r
A/B 30 2 .25
A/C 44 9 .25
A/E 19 4 .02
A/V 0 0 .00
A/Y 0 0 .00
B/C 8 8 .13
B/E 3 1 .01
B/V 0 0 .00
B/Y 0 0 .00
C/E 7 2 .01
C/V 0 0 .00
C/Y 0 0 .00
E/V 0 1 .00
E/Y 1 6 .02
V/Y 0 0 .00
I have run Spearmans rho and the correlation is highly significant for
all comparisons. The data are not normal though, and I am questioning
multiple regression results (X to Y dependent variable). A college of
mine suggests that the standardized beta result may be a valid
indicator of some significant difference however. I'd greatly
appreciate any suggestions.
Sincerely yours,
John Ziker
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