"Food Distribution Among Hunter-Gatherers in Northern Siberia: Tests of Evolutionary Hypotheses", Invited Session: New Research in the Evolutionary Ecology of Food Transfer

Empirical data on food procurement and distribution combined with socio-demographic information on givers and recipients in a community of indigenous Siberians are used to test hypotheses of non-market food transfers derived from evolutionary theory, including: kinship, reciprocal altruism, tolerated scrounging, and costly signaling. The frequency and volume of food distributed are analyzed by considering independent variables including relatedness, age and sex differences, household proximity, hunter status, stated rationales for sharing, previous sharing and other aid, relative amounts of food on hand, hunting season, and storage capacity. The paper illustrates how the giving and receiving of food operates within the flexible strategies of hunter-gatherers in an uncertain environment: a remote Arctic community in postsocialist Russia. The development and continuation of non-market food transfers in Siberia provides additional perspective into discussions of the evolution of human social behavior. Non-market food transfers in this case study are embedded in kinship and other social institutions that aim to provide a social safety net for family and community members in ways analogous to those discovered among other hunter-gatherers.