
Rusty GreavesUniversity of New Mexico | UNM
Rusty Greaves
Ph.D.
About
79
Publications
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Introduction
I am an ethnoarchaeologist interested in evolutionary behavioral ecology methods and research goals. I focus on hunter-gatherers and small scale horticultural societies, subsistence, technology, and social organization.
Additional affiliations
January 1996 - May 1998
January 2006 - August 2023
August 2001 - August 2005
Education
September 1987 - May 1997
September 1984 - May 1987
September 1977 - May 1983
Publications
Publications (79)
The anthropological literature generally describes forager women as less mobile than men because of their child-care responsibilities and the energetic costs of reproduction. Examination of resource transport among the savanna Pume of southwestern Venezuela reveals, in contrast, that for certain food resources travel distances and resource weights...
Sex differences in range size and navigation are widely reported, with males traveling farther than females, being less spatially anxious, and in many studies navigating more effectively. One explanation holds that these differences are the result of sexual selection, with larger ranges conferring mating benefits on males, while another explanation...
Dispersal of individuals from their natal communities at sexual maturity is an important determinant of kin association. In this paper we compare postmarital residence patterns among Pumé foragers of Venezuela to investigate the prevalence of sex-biased vs. bilateral residence. This study complements cross-cultural overviews by examining postmarita...
Life history is an important framework for understanding many aspects of ontogeny and reproduction relative to fitness outcomes. Because growth is a key influence on the timing of reproductive maturity and age at first birth is a critical demographic variable predicting lifetime fertility, it raises questions about the synchrony of growth and repro...
In recent years, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has sought to enforce home elevation policies more strictly across coastal Southeast Louisiana. These policies are meant to protect homes from flooding resulting from tropical storms. Such policies, however, are widely reviled by coastal community residents. This paper presents the res...
While it is commonly assumed that farmers have higher, and foragers lower, fertility compared to populations practicing other forms of subsistence, robust supportive evidence is lacking. We tested whether subsistence activities—incorporating market integration—are associated with fertility in 10,250 women from 27 small-scale societies and found con...
To address claims of human exceptionalism, we determine where humans fit within the greater mammalian distribution of reproductive inequality. We show that humans exhibit lower reproductive skew (i.e., inequality in the number of surviving offspring) among males and smaller sex differences in reproductive skew than most other mammals, while neverth...
The Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion (MBSD) project, located in Barataria Bay, Southeast Louisiana, is one of the most ambitious coastal restoration projects in U.S. history. The MBSD project is designed to convey sediment-rich water from the Mississippi River through the levee system and into the coastal marshes of the Barataria basin. The MBSD pr...
Estuaries are profoundly rich, diverse, and complex ecosystems, and crucial to the overall health of Earth's oceans. Estuarine ecological complexity is matched by tremendous human cultural diversity. In the United States, millions of people live in estuarine environments from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic—many of whom directly depend on the prod...
Human adaptation depends on the integration of slow life history, complex production skills, and extensive sociality. Refining and testing models of the evolution of human life history and cultural learning benefit from increasingly accurate measurement of knowledge, skills, and rates of production with age. We pursue this goal by inferring hunters...
A hypothesis for the evolution of long post-reproductive lifespans in the human lineage involves asymmetries in relatedness between young immigrant females and the older females in their new groups. In these circumstances, inter-generational reproductive conflicts between younger and older females are predicted to resolve in favour of the younger f...
A hypothesis for the evolution of long post-reproductive lifespans in the human lineage involves asymmetries in relatedness between young immigrant females and the older females in their new groups. In these circumstances, inter-generational reproductive conflicts between younger and older females are predicted to resolve in favor of the younger fe...
Human adaptation depends upon the integration of slow life history, complex production skills, and extensive sociality. Refining and testing models of the evolution of human life history and cultural learning will benefit from increasingly accurate measurement of knowledge, skills, and rates of production with age. We pursue this goal by inferring...
Monogamy appears to have become the predominant human mating system with the emergence of highly unequal agricultural populations that replaced relatively egalitarian horticultural populations, challenging the conventional idea-based on the polygyny threshold model-that polygyny should be positively associated with wealth inequality. To address thi...
Much of our success as a species derives from the ability to adapt hunting and gathering to diverse ecologies and incorporate a wide range of food resources. Throughout their history foragers have been making strategic decisions about whether to incorporate new resources and technologies. This appears to be both the strength and resilience of hunte...
The origins of agriculture and the shift from hunting and gathering to committed agriculture is
regarded as one of the major transitions in human history. Archaeologists and anthropologists have
invested significant efforts in explaining the origins of agriculture. A period of gathering intensification and experimentation and pursuing a mixed econo...
Abstract Sex differences in range size and navigation are widely reported, with males traveling farther than females, being less spatially anxious, and in many studies navigating more effectively. One explanation holds that these differences are the result of sexual selection, with larger ranges conferring mating benefits on males, while another ex...
Much of our success as a species derives from the ability to adapt hunting and gathering to diverse ecologies and incorporate a wide range of food resources. Hunter-gatherers maintain broad dietary
options through an array of alternative and fallback strategies. While many decisions facing foragers have been analyzed, few paired nutritional and ret...
Postmarital residence patterns in traditional human societies figure prominently in models of hominid social evolution with arguments for patrilocal human bands similar in structure to female-dispersal systems in other African apes. However, considerable flexibility in hunter-gatherer cultures has led to their characterization as primarily multiloc...
The thymus plays an important role in the development of the immune system, yet little is known about the patterns and sources of variation in postnatal thymic development. The aim of this study is to contribute cross-cultural data on thymus size in infants from two South American native populations, the Tsimane of Bolivia and the Pumé of Venezuela...
Attention has been given to cross-cultural differences in adolescent growth, but far less is known about developmental variability during juvenility (ages 3-10). Previous research among the Pumé, a group of South American foragers, found that girls achieve a greater proportion of their adult stature during juvenility compared with normative growth...
ANTROPOLÓGICA Nº 113 Tomo LIV Datos de censos a nivel nacional muestran que la transición demográfica
moderna –la reciente tendencia hacia un descenso en la mortalidad y la fertilidad– está bien
establecida en la mayoría de los países. Una imagen diferente emerge cuando se consideran
datos de sociedades a pequeña escala en áreas no industrializadas...
Life history theory places central importance on relationships between ontogeny, reproduction, and mortality. Fast human life histories have been theoretically and empirically associated with high mortality regimes. This relationship, however, poses an unanswered question about energy allocation. In epidemiologically stressful environments, a great...
The anthropological literature generally describes forager women as less mobile than men because of their child-care responsibilities and the energetic costs of reproduction. Examination of resource transport among the savanna Pumé of southwestern Venezuela reveals, in contrast, that for certain food resources travel distances and resource weights...
National census data show that the modern demographic transition—the recent trend toward declining mortality and fertility—is well underway in most countries. A different picture emerges when data from small-scale societies in unindustrialized parts of the world are considered. Many of these small-scale societies are also adapting to rapid changes...
Popular presentation of ethnoarchaeological research among Pumé foragers of Venezuela and museum research of material culture
On December 7, 2004, the Center for Archaeological Research (CAR) conducted a Phase I intensive pedestrian archaeological survey of a 10-acre portion of Tract 4 in the Las Blancas Subdivision located near Laredo in Webb County, Texas, for Habitat for Humanity of Laredo. The proposed development consists of the construction of low-income housing wit...
In November of 2002 and March of 2003, a crew from the Center for Archaeological Research at The University of Texas at San Antonio conducted archeological and geoarcheological investigations along Salado Creek in San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas. The purpose of this fieldwork was to investigate, using shovel testing and backhoe trenching, the impa...
San Antonio conducted archaeological investigations for the City of San Antonio in a 2,570.25-acre project area that is the future site of the San Antonio Toyota Motor Manufacturing Plant. The work was conducted under Texas Antiquities Permit No. 2982 with Dr. Steve A. Tomka, CAR Director, serving as Principal Investigator.
The project included the...
Archeological testing of two previously identified prehistoric archeological sites in Goliad County, Texas, was performed by the Center for Archaeological Research (CAR) at The University of Texas at San Antonio. Testing examined 41GD113 and 41GD114 to determine their potential eligibility for listing on the National Register of Historic Places (NR...
Between April 1981 and December 1982, Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) personnel conducted archeological fieldwork along an approximately 13-km segment of FM 481 in northwest Zavala County. The work was part of an evaluation of the impacts of road improvements to a series of sites along the right-of-way. All of the sites but one (41ZV202)...
From May to June 2002, the Center for Archaeological Research (CAR), The University of Texas at San Antonio, under contract with Texas Army National Guard (TXARNG), conducted National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) and State Archeological Landmark (SAL) eligibility testing at selected sites within the Camp Maxey training facility in north Lamar...
In May of 2001, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPW) contracted with the Center for Archaeological Research (CAR) at The University of Texas at San Antonio to conduct an archaeological survey of trails and revisit previously recorded archaeological sites in the northern and central portions of Government Canyon State Natural Area (GCSNA)....
In May of 2001, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPW) contracted with the Center for Archaeological Research (CAR) at The University of Texas at San Antonio to conduct an archaeological survey of trails and revisit previously recorded archaeological sites in the northern and central portions of Government Canyon State Natural Area (GCSNA)....
Two archaeological field efforts were performed at Huntsville State Park, Walker County, Texas in May and
July 2001. An archaeological survey examined the areas to be impacted by rehabilitation and expansion of roads, parking areas, campground pullouts, and utilities (160 acres/65 ha). Additional testing and limited mitigation was performed at 41WA...
Enhancing our understanding of the skeletal biology of modern hunter-gatherers and developing more sophisticated models of fossil and prehistoric hominin locomotor behavior and subsistence activities requires information on male and female forager mobility patterns. Unlike other primates, modern human foragers expend considerable energy in activiti...
Stone tools and the debris from their manufacture are the most common remains from archaeological sites all over the world. Unraveling how prehistoric people made and used their technology is a major challenge of archaeological interpretation. Many archaeologists have sought to understand the organization of technology through an emphasis on the in...
ETHNOARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION OF SUBSISTENCE MOBILITY, RESOURCE TARGETING, AND TECHNOLOGICAL ORGANIZATION AMONG PUME FORAGERS OF VENEZUELA
by Russell Dean Greaves,
May 1997.
PhD. Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM USA.
Committee: Dr. Lewis R. Binford, Chair, Dr. Hillard Kaplan, Dr. Erik Trinkaus...
ETHNOARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION OF SUBSISTENCE MOBILITY, RESOURCE TARGETING, AND TECHNOLOGICAL ORGANIZATION AMONG PUME FORAGERS OF VENEZUELA by Russell Dean Greaves, May 1997. PhD. Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM USA. Committee: Dr. Lewis R. Binford, Chair, Dr. Hillard Kaplan, Dr. Erik Trinkaus,...