Duncan Stibbard Hawkes- Doctor of Philosophy
- Professor (Assistant) at Durham University
Duncan Stibbard Hawkes
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Professor (Assistant) at Durham University
About
20
Publications
4,752
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212
Citations
Introduction
An evolutionary anthropologist interested in food-sharing, hunting skill, the use and abuse of signalling theory and forager egalitarianism, among other things.
Skills and Expertise
Current institution
Additional affiliations
September 2017 - March 2020
Education
September 2012 - September 2017
Publications
Publications (20)
The measurement of hunting ability has been central to several debates about the goals of men's hunting among the Hadza and other hunter-gatherer populations. Hunting ability has previously been measured indirectly, by weighing the amount of food individuals bring back to camp over an extended period, their central place hunting return rate, and by...
It has been argued that men's hunting in many forager groups is not, primarily, a means of family provisioning but is a costly way of signaling otherwise cryptic qualities related to hunting ability. Much literature concerning the signaling value of hunting draws links to Zahavi's handicap principle and the costly signaling literature in zoology. H...
Objectives:
The incentives underlying men's hunting acquisition patterns among foragers are much debated. Some argue that hunters preferentially channel foods to their households, others maintain that foods are widely redistributed. Debates have focused on the redistribution of foods brought to camp, though the proper interpretation of results is...
Over the last half century, anthropologists have vigorously debated the adaptive motivations underlying food acquisition choices and food-sharing among hunter-gatherer groups. Numerous explanations have been proposed to account for high-levels of generosity in food-sharing, including self- and family-provisioning, reciprocity, tolerated theft and p...
Many have interpreted symbolic material culture in the deep past as evidencing the origins sophisticated, modern cognition. Scholars from across the behavioural and cognitive sciences, including linguists, psychologists, philosophers, neuroscientists, primatologists, archaeologists and paleoanthropologists have used such artefacts to assess the cap...
Globally, there are large disparities in wealth and political decision making power. By contrast, several African hunter-gatherer groups are considered exemplars of material and political egalitarianism. Whilst extant literature has revealed egalitarian maintenance mechanisms specific to individual communities, systematic cross-cultural analysis ha...
The phrase Man the Hunter is associated with sexist theories of human evolution, but wildly disparate use of the phrase has led to unnecessary scientific disagreement and popular misunderstanding. In this paper, we ask: what does Man the Hunter mean? We distinguish three historical meanings of Man the Hunter. First, in the early-to-mid 20th century...
The target article explores material culture datasets from three African forager groups. After demonstrating that these modern, contemporary human populations would leave scant evidence of symbolic behaviour or material complexity, it cautioned against using material culture as a barometer for human cognition in the deep past. Twenty-one commentari...
Behavioural research in traditional subsistence populations is often conducted in a non-native language. Recent studies show that non-native language-use systematically influences behaviour, including in widely-used methodologies. However, such studies are largely conducted in rich, industrialised societies, using at least one European language. Th...
Hadza food-sharing is extremely generous and often extends to individuals outside the household. Some anthropologists have proposed that individuals, especially men, share food beyond the household in order to signal foraging skill. While correlational data have been used to both evidence and critique this hypothesis, it has less often been experim...
Objectives
Myopia rates are increasing globally. This epidemic is linked to increased school participation, decreased outdoor activity and the proliferation of near-work occupations. The Tanzanian Hadza have traditionally subsisted as hunter-gatherers. School participation has historically been low and near-work otherwise minimal. Previous studies...
Humans’ willingness to bear costs to benefit others is an evolutionary puzzle. Cultural group selection proposes a possible answer to this puzzle—cooperative norms and institutions proliferate due to group-level benefits. For instance, belief in knowledgeable, moralizing deities is theorized to decrease selfishness and favoritism through threat of...
Many contemporary and ethnographically recorded hunter-gatherer populations appear to be, in the words of James Woodburn (1982; p.434), ‘egalitarian societies’. Among human populations and among group living mammals more broadly, such egalitarianism is unusual and, some have argued, requires special explanation. Several authors, including Woodburn...
The ratio of index- and ring-finger lengths (2D:4D ratio) is thought to be related to prenatal androgen exposure, and in many, though not all, populations, men have a lower average digit ratio than do women. In many studies an inverse relationship has been observed, among both men and women, between 2D:4D ratio and measures of athletic ability. It...
