Human Residence Patterns
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Human Residence Patterns
ROBERT S. WALKER
Abstract
This essay addresses the significance and evidence surrounding the debate about
how hunter-gatherers and other humans organize their residential groups. In
most species of mammals, either males or female remain in their natal group (the
philopatric sex) while the other sex disperses at maturity (the dispersing sex).
Sex-biased philopatry and dispersal has many downstream effects on all aspects
of social bonds and organization. Recent genetic data and detailed cross-cultural
ethnographic information suggest that human societies are quite variable and
flexible in nature with males and females likely to either stay or disperse from natal
families. Brothers and sisters commonly coreside in the same community and form
life-long bonds in a system quite unlike that of our primate relatives. This multilocal
human residence pattern of flexible residence combined with marriage exchange
systems create complex meta-group social structures with kin-based coalitions that
extend across multiple residential groups. Human kinship and social networks that
encompass multiple communities led to the emergence of large alliances at scales
unparalleled by other species.
INTRODUCTION
The traditional view of human social organization is generally that patrilocal
postmarital residence (women transfer at marriage) is a core human tendency and similar in structure to female-dispersal systems (females transfer
at maturity, or male philopatry) in other African apes (Wrangham, 1986). This
model was initially supported by some global genetic (Seielstad, Minch, &
Cavalli-Sforza, 1998) and ethnographic (Ember, 1978) data. However, this
view has recently been challenged on both fronts by more detailed studies
at local scales. While comparative ethnographic databases suggest that over
70% of human cultures around the world have patrilocal tendencies (cultural
“rules” or preferences for women to transfer at marriage), individual-level
census data for both hunter-gatherers (Hill et al., 2011) and lowland South
American horticulturalists (Walker et al., 2013) show that these human societies are best characterized as multilocal where either sex may disperse or
remain in their natal group.
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Multilocal residence patterns result in common co-residence of adult brothers and sisters in the same residential grouping (camp or village) which is
unlike residence patterns seen in most other social animals where one or
the other sex habitually migrates at maturity. There are many advantages
to reporting and comparing actual counts of co-resident kin, as opposed to
simply relying on stated cultural “rules”. Recent human coresidence studies
point to both the uniqueness of human social structures and to considerable
variation not fully described by traditional postmarital residence typologies
or by biological designations of philopatry.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Ethnographic patterns of postmarital residence in traditional human societies around the world have figured prominently in models of human social
evolution. Some anthropologists have long argued for mostly patrilocal
human societies that are similar in social structure to female-dispersal
systems typical of our closest living primate relatives. This patrilocal human
model from a primate perspective suggests that patrilocality (or male
philopatry) may have a long evolutionary history that extends back at least
to the last common ancestor between chimpanzees and humans, if not
earlier. Both stable isotopes in Australopithecines (Copeland et al., 2011) and
mtDNA in Neandertals (Lalueza-Fox et al., 2011) have also provided indirect
evidence of patrilocality and may also tentatively support a deep evolutionary history of male philopatry, although these results remain preliminary
and the genetic evidence is inconclusive (Vigilant and Langergraber, 2011).
The emergence of large-scale genetic datasets now allows detailed analyses
of human social structures and demographic histories of human populations
around the world. In particular, comparisons between mtDNA (inherited
through females) and Y chromosomes (inherited through males) reveal a
history of sex-biased migration patterns that vary widely across human
cultures and are best elucidated with an understanding of local sociocultural
practices. Several early sex-specific genetic studies with humans seemed to
suggest that at large scales (e.g., across the globe) that there was much more
movement of mtDNA than Y chromosomes, implicating patrilocality (e.g.,
Seielstad et al., 1998). However, one complication of these studies is that
asymmetrical genetic histories between males and females can be a result of
small male effective population size because of reproductive skew (polygyny) and/or increased female gene flow (Wilkins, 2006). More recent and
nuanced finer-grained studies at local scales support considerable variation
across different sociocultural contexts that generally tend to match with
known ethnographic patterns of either matrilocality, patrilocality, or some
mix therein (multilocality). In tandem, genetics and cultural anthropology
Human Residence Patterns
3
provide a robust methodology to evaluate in a comprehensive manner the
different scenarios of both ancient and more contemporary behaviors of
sex-biased migrational histories, but neither currently points to patrilocality
as a core human tendency.
Classical social organization studies examined postmarital residence decisions by asking whether or not couples generally resided with or near particular relatives after marriage. Historically, the standard method was to note
the ideal arrangement or the most common type of residence pattern and to
ignore variation. The most extensive ethnographic dataset is a sample from
over 1200 human societies around the world known as the Ethnographic Atlas.
One of the primary variables in the Atlas is “transfer of residence at marriage” which shows that 71% of the sample is considered patrilocal, 16%
matrilocal, and 13% ambilocal or neolocal (Figure 1). Comparative ethnography would then seem to support patrilocal tendencies for most human
societies. However, these data generally rely heavily on stated preferences of
residence or supposed cultural “rules” which may involve considerable flexibility and rule-breaking, not to mention demographic constraints that can
nullify any preferences. Moreover, the current distribution of human populations is driven strongly by a number of large agricultural expansions stemming from various centers of farming around the world.
Human ancestors lived entirely as hunter-gatherers until relatively recent
transitions to agricultural and pastoral lifestyles over the last some 10,000
years, and successfully colonized all of the world’s habitats long before
agricultural revolutions. Therefore, the use of ethnographic data over large
global samples may be misleading. Economic intensification, in particular
land-holding and cattle-raising, often acts to increase patrilocal residence.
Research concentrating on hunter-gatherer societies would seem to be a
Figure 1 Locations of 1,235 societies colored according to patrilocal (marked in
blue, 71% of sample), matrilocal (pink, 16%), or ambi-/neo-local (gray, 13%)
tendencies in postmarital residence. Source: Data used here are from variable #11
in the Ethnographic Atlas (Transfer of Residence at Marriage: After First Years).
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
logical solution. That said, the extent to which modern human societies
represent ancestral human patterns may be partially addressed by concurrent examination of patterns in both hunter-gatherer and horticultural
societies. One point of contention against strictly using contemporary
hunter-gatherers as models of human evolution is that they reside in
marginal habitats after being displaced by more powerful horticultural
and agricultural groups. This displacement likely led to smaller residential
groups and more flexible residence strategies. Horticulturalists are associated with higher-quality environments, larger social groups, more sedentary
villages, more political inequality, and more intergroup conflict, and may
therefore provide additional insights into evolved human social structures.
In terms of material wealth and wealth inequality, horticulturalists are more
similar to hunter-gatherers than to pastoral or agricultural societies. Furthermore, lowland horticulturalists supplement their small-scale agricultural
production with considerable hunting, fishing, and gathering and have
mortality and fertility profiles similar to hunter-gatherers.
CUTTING EDGE RESEARCH
Given the pitfalls of relying simply on purported residences “rules” or preferences from the ethnographic record, a promising strategy is to analyze actual
census and genealogical data on group composition. Two comparative studies have used this strategy for 34 hunter-gatherer societies and 34 lowland
South American horticultural societies giving an overall sample of 12,176
adults living in 571 residential groups (camps, longhouses, and villages, Hill
et al., 2011; Walker et al., 2013). The average number of adult primary kin (i.e.,
mother, father, sisters, brothers, daughters, and sons) coresiding is available
for each ethnographic study group. The expectation is that for truly patrilocal
systems adult men should live with much more primary kin than women and
vice versa for matrilocal systems. The relative number of coresiding primary
kin living with men versus women is well described by a measure developed
by June Helm. Helm’s measure is calculated as the sum of all adult primary
kin living with an average man divided by the sum of all primary kin living
with both an average man and an average woman. Helm’s measure can theoretically vary from zero, where women live with close kin but men do not,
to unity, where men live with close kin but women do not (Figure 2).
The valid measurement of residence patterns is an inherently complex
problem, but there is a simple elegance to Helm’s measure which easily
incorporates some common critiques, such as defining marital residence
in terms of individuals and not couples and reporting residence of both
married and nonmarried individuals. However, Helm’s measure does
not define residence in terms of the composition at the time of entry into
Human Residence Patterns
5
(a)
8
Horticulturalists
6
4
Frequency
2
0
(b)
8
Hunter-gatherers
6
4
2
0
0.30
0.35
0.40
0.45
0.50
0.55
0.60
0.65
0.70
0.75
Helm’s measure
Figure 2 Frequency distribution of Helm’s measure for 34 lowland
horticulturalists (a, mean = 0.46, sd = 0.07) compared to 33 hunter-gatherer
societies (b, mean = 0.53, sd = 0.08). Helm’s measure is the sum of all adult
primary kin living with an average man divided by the sum of all primary kin living
with both an average man and an average woman.
that household and does not specify the degree of social integration into
residential groups, both of which are difficult to address given the available
ethnographic data. A convenient aspect of Helm’s measure is that it does not
vary systematically with the size of residential units. While total kin counts
do increase with residential group size, the increase is similar for both men
and women.
Results have confirmed suspicions that there is considerable variation in
residence patterns both within and between human societies that has led to
their characterization as primarily multilocal in nature with both males and
females commonly dispersing or residing with natal families. In fact, Helm’s
measure averages 0.53 for hunter-gatherers (slightly “patrilocal”) and 0.46
for horticulturalists (slightly “matrilocal”). Adult brothers and sisters often
coreside in both samples and there is no overall tendency in hunter-gatherers
for either men or women to live with more parents or offspring as would
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
be expected if patrilocality (or matrilocality) were indeed a core human tendency. The only consistent male-biased kin category is a preference for men
to live with brothers more frequently than with sisters. In Amazonian horticultural societies, the only bias is a slight tendency for women to live with
more kin (despite a traditional anthropological notion that most tropical forest cultures were patrilocal). Slight matrilocality may very well be a recently
derived feature of lowland South American societies and not indicative of
ancient human social structure. Statistical patterns of coresidence, including
both individual kin counts and Helm’s measure, do match to some degree
with ethnographically-reported postmarital residence typologies, although
there are enough borderline cases and outright exceptions to make one nervous to rely simply on typology.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Explaining variation in residence patterns remains a formidable task. Some
potentially important but underexplored variables include the relative
economic importance of fishing versus hunting versus agriculture, value of
brideservice, internal versus external warfare, brother-brother competition
over mates, male or female cooperative labor, length of extended male
absences, rates of wife capture, costs of obliging kin, and demographic
stochasticity. Most of these variables are likely to affect residence strategies
but are difficult to quantify given the generally anecdotal nature of the
ethnographic record. We do note that lowland Amazonians are traditionally
more warlike than the hunter-gatherer sample and yet lowlanders are actually more matrilocal and show less of a brother-brother bias than that seen in
hunter-gatherers. Tentatively, it seems that those Amazonians traditionally
under strong pressure of internal conflict within ethnolinguistic boundaries
do emphasize brother-brother coresidence, whereas those under mostly
external conflict, which potentially requires more male absence, are more
matrilocal, as has been supported in a global sample of human cultures.
It can be difficult to clearly distinguish actual decisions made by individuals, and the on-the-ground availability of kin of different categories,
from preferences for particular residence situations that may not be realized because of demographic constraints. Helm’s measure using actual
coresidence information may offer some advantages over standard anthropological typologies by reporting and comparing counts of coresident kin,
but stated cultural “rules” may still be informative, however, since one
cannot clearly distinguish moves between segments within villages from
coresidence in the natal house when censuses are not specific to multiple
scales of analysis. In some cases women live with more kin at the level of
extended households, perhaps to facilitate childcare, but men live with more
Human Residence Patterns
7
kin at the village level, perhaps to facilitate male alliances. Because of these
complexities, more complete accounts of ethnographic variation should
ideally include both traditional residence typologies and actual patterns of
coresidence from censuses taken at multiple scales of community structure.
Corroborating such multiple-level census evidence with fine-grained genetic
studies would help add a much needed time component to such analyses.
Chapais (2008) has developed a model that synthesizes contemporary primate socio-ecological studies with classical studies on human kinship and
postmarital residence. His model explains how the affiliation of several men
to the same woman, related to each other as consanguineal (blood) and affinal
kin (in-laws), ameliorates hostile between-group relations and allows visiting and opportunistic coresidence in human meta-group social structures
(multiple residential bands exchanging spouses, goods, and information).
Long-term cooperation among adult brothers, sisters, and bilateral kin may
have emerged from a novel and flexible human residence system facilitated
by pair bonding (marriage) and recognition of fathers. Other primates lack a
meta-group structure because either males or females generally emigrate at
maturity without a system of exchange, a pattern that mostly isolates kin
lineages to single communities. Human coresidence studies then provide
support for the importance of long-term sibling and bilateral kin cooperation as predicted from this model where amicable between-group relations
are facilitated by visiting and opportunistic coresidence. Meta-group social
structure serves to ramp up the scale of warfare by uniting multiple lineages,
villages, and even chiefdoms against other large confederations. Questions
of how and when this human social structure evolved and its effects on cooperation and cultural capacity remain an important key to understanding the
emergence of human uniqueness.
REFERENCES
Chapais, B. (2008). Primeval kinship: How pair-bonding gave birth to human society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Copeland, S. R., Sponheimer, M., de Ruiter, D. J., Lee-Thorp, J. A., Codron, D., le
Roux, P. J., . . ., Richards, M. P. (2011). Strontium isotope evidence for landscape
use by early hominins. Nature, 474(7349), 76–78.
Ember, C. (1978). Myths about hunter-gatherers. Ethnology, 17, 439–448.
Hill, K., Walker, R. S., Bozicevic, M., Eder, J., Headland, T., Hewlett, B., . . ., Wood,
B. (2011). Co-residence patterns in hunter-gatherer societies show unique human
social structure. Science, 331, 1286–1289.
Lalueza-Fox, C., Rosas, A., Estalrrich, A., Gigli, E., Campos, P. F., García-Tabernero,
A., . . ., de la Rasilla, M.. (2011). Genetic evidence for patrilocal mating behavior
among Neandertal groups. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(1),
250–253.
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Marlowe, F. W. (2004). Marital residence among foragers. Current Anthropology, 45,
277–284.
Seielstad, M. T., Minch, E., & Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. (1998). Genetic evidence for a
higher female migration rate in humans. Nature genetics, 20(3), 278–280.
Vigilant, L., & Langergraber, K. E. (2011). Inconclusive evidence for patrilocality in
Neandertals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 108(18), E87.
Walker, R. S., Beckermann, S., Flinn, M. V., Gurven, M., von Rueden, C., Kramer, K.
L., . . ., Hill, K. R. (2013). Living with kin in lowland horticultural societies. Current
Anthropology, 54, 96–103.
Wilkins, J. F. (2006). Unraveling male and female histories from human genetic data.
Current Opinion in Genetics & Development, 16(6), 611–617.
Wrangham, R. W. (1986). Ecology and social relationships in two species of chimpanzee. In D. I. Rubenstein & R. W. Wrangham (Eds.), Ecological aspects of social
evolution: Birds and mammals (pp. 352–378). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
ROBERT S. WALKER SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Robert S. Walker is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Missouri. Rob specializes in comparative analyses of human culture
and has been collecting comparative human databases over the last decade,
in particular for global samples of hunter-gatherers and for lowland South
American populations.
Personal webpage: http://anthropology.missouri.edu/?q=node/84
Database for Indigenous Cultural Evolution: http://dice.missouri.edu
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-
Human Residence Patterns
ROBERT S. WALKER
Abstract
This essay addresses the significance and evidence surrounding the debate about
how hunter-gatherers and other humans organize their residential groups. In
most species of mammals, either males or female remain in their natal group (the
philopatric sex) while the other sex disperses at maturity (the dispersing sex).
Sex-biased philopatry and dispersal has many downstream effects on all aspects
of social bonds and organization. Recent genetic data and detailed cross-cultural
ethnographic information suggest that human societies are quite variable and
flexible in nature with males and females likely to either stay or disperse from natal
families. Brothers and sisters commonly coreside in the same community and form
life-long bonds in a system quite unlike that of our primate relatives. This multilocal
human residence pattern of flexible residence combined with marriage exchange
systems create complex meta-group social structures with kin-based coalitions that
extend across multiple residential groups. Human kinship and social networks that
encompass multiple communities led to the emergence of large alliances at scales
unparalleled by other species.
INTRODUCTION
The traditional view of human social organization is generally that patrilocal
postmarital residence (women transfer at marriage) is a core human tendency and similar in structure to female-dispersal systems (females transfer
at maturity, or male philopatry) in other African apes (Wrangham, 1986). This
model was initially supported by some global genetic (Seielstad, Minch, &
Cavalli-Sforza, 1998) and ethnographic (Ember, 1978) data. However, this
view has recently been challenged on both fronts by more detailed studies
at local scales. While comparative ethnographic databases suggest that over
70% of human cultures around the world have patrilocal tendencies (cultural
“rules” or preferences for women to transfer at marriage), individual-level
census data for both hunter-gatherers (Hill et al., 2011) and lowland South
American horticulturalists (Walker et al., 2013) show that these human societies are best characterized as multilocal where either sex may disperse or
remain in their natal group.
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Multilocal residence patterns result in common co-residence of adult brothers and sisters in the same residential grouping (camp or village) which is
unlike residence patterns seen in most other social animals where one or
the other sex habitually migrates at maturity. There are many advantages
to reporting and comparing actual counts of co-resident kin, as opposed to
simply relying on stated cultural “rules”. Recent human coresidence studies
point to both the uniqueness of human social structures and to considerable
variation not fully described by traditional postmarital residence typologies
or by biological designations of philopatry.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Ethnographic patterns of postmarital residence in traditional human societies around the world have figured prominently in models of human social
evolution. Some anthropologists have long argued for mostly patrilocal
human societies that are similar in social structure to female-dispersal
systems typical of our closest living primate relatives. This patrilocal human
model from a primate perspective suggests that patrilocality (or male
philopatry) may have a long evolutionary history that extends back at least
to the last common ancestor between chimpanzees and humans, if not
earlier. Both stable isotopes in Australopithecines (Copeland et al., 2011) and
mtDNA in Neandertals (Lalueza-Fox et al., 2011) have also provided indirect
evidence of patrilocality and may also tentatively support a deep evolutionary history of male philopatry, although these results remain preliminary
and the genetic evidence is inconclusive (Vigilant and Langergraber, 2011).
The emergence of large-scale genetic datasets now allows detailed analyses
of human social structures and demographic histories of human populations
around the world. In particular, comparisons between mtDNA (inherited
through females) and Y chromosomes (inherited through males) reveal a
history of sex-biased migration patterns that vary widely across human
cultures and are best elucidated with an understanding of local sociocultural
practices. Several early sex-specific genetic studies with humans seemed to
suggest that at large scales (e.g., across the globe) that there was much more
movement of mtDNA than Y chromosomes, implicating patrilocality (e.g.,
Seielstad et al., 1998). However, one complication of these studies is that
asymmetrical genetic histories between males and females can be a result of
small male effective population size because of reproductive skew (polygyny) and/or increased female gene flow (Wilkins, 2006). More recent and
nuanced finer-grained studies at local scales support considerable variation
across different sociocultural contexts that generally tend to match with
known ethnographic patterns of either matrilocality, patrilocality, or some
mix therein (multilocality). In tandem, genetics and cultural anthropology
Human Residence Patterns
3
provide a robust methodology to evaluate in a comprehensive manner the
different scenarios of both ancient and more contemporary behaviors of
sex-biased migrational histories, but neither currently points to patrilocality
as a core human tendency.
Classical social organization studies examined postmarital residence decisions by asking whether or not couples generally resided with or near particular relatives after marriage. Historically, the standard method was to note
the ideal arrangement or the most common type of residence pattern and to
ignore variation. The most extensive ethnographic dataset is a sample from
over 1200 human societies around the world known as the Ethnographic Atlas.
One of the primary variables in the Atlas is “transfer of residence at marriage” which shows that 71% of the sample is considered patrilocal, 16%
matrilocal, and 13% ambilocal or neolocal (Figure 1). Comparative ethnography would then seem to support patrilocal tendencies for most human
societies. However, these data generally rely heavily on stated preferences of
residence or supposed cultural “rules” which may involve considerable flexibility and rule-breaking, not to mention demographic constraints that can
nullify any preferences. Moreover, the current distribution of human populations is driven strongly by a number of large agricultural expansions stemming from various centers of farming around the world.
Human ancestors lived entirely as hunter-gatherers until relatively recent
transitions to agricultural and pastoral lifestyles over the last some 10,000
years, and successfully colonized all of the world’s habitats long before
agricultural revolutions. Therefore, the use of ethnographic data over large
global samples may be misleading. Economic intensification, in particular
land-holding and cattle-raising, often acts to increase patrilocal residence.
Research concentrating on hunter-gatherer societies would seem to be a
Figure 1 Locations of 1,235 societies colored according to patrilocal (marked in
blue, 71% of sample), matrilocal (pink, 16%), or ambi-/neo-local (gray, 13%)
tendencies in postmarital residence. Source: Data used here are from variable #11
in the Ethnographic Atlas (Transfer of Residence at Marriage: After First Years).
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
logical solution. That said, the extent to which modern human societies
represent ancestral human patterns may be partially addressed by concurrent examination of patterns in both hunter-gatherer and horticultural
societies. One point of contention against strictly using contemporary
hunter-gatherers as models of human evolution is that they reside in
marginal habitats after being displaced by more powerful horticultural
and agricultural groups. This displacement likely led to smaller residential
groups and more flexible residence strategies. Horticulturalists are associated with higher-quality environments, larger social groups, more sedentary
villages, more political inequality, and more intergroup conflict, and may
therefore provide additional insights into evolved human social structures.
In terms of material wealth and wealth inequality, horticulturalists are more
similar to hunter-gatherers than to pastoral or agricultural societies. Furthermore, lowland horticulturalists supplement their small-scale agricultural
production with considerable hunting, fishing, and gathering and have
mortality and fertility profiles similar to hunter-gatherers.
CUTTING EDGE RESEARCH
Given the pitfalls of relying simply on purported residences “rules” or preferences from the ethnographic record, a promising strategy is to analyze actual
census and genealogical data on group composition. Two comparative studies have used this strategy for 34 hunter-gatherer societies and 34 lowland
South American horticultural societies giving an overall sample of 12,176
adults living in 571 residential groups (camps, longhouses, and villages, Hill
et al., 2011; Walker et al., 2013). The average number of adult primary kin (i.e.,
mother, father, sisters, brothers, daughters, and sons) coresiding is available
for each ethnographic study group. The expectation is that for truly patrilocal
systems adult men should live with much more primary kin than women and
vice versa for matrilocal systems. The relative number of coresiding primary
kin living with men versus women is well described by a measure developed
by June Helm. Helm’s measure is calculated as the sum of all adult primary
kin living with an average man divided by the sum of all primary kin living
with both an average man and an average woman. Helm’s measure can theoretically vary from zero, where women live with close kin but men do not,
to unity, where men live with close kin but women do not (Figure 2).
The valid measurement of residence patterns is an inherently complex
problem, but there is a simple elegance to Helm’s measure which easily
incorporates some common critiques, such as defining marital residence
in terms of individuals and not couples and reporting residence of both
married and nonmarried individuals. However, Helm’s measure does
not define residence in terms of the composition at the time of entry into
Human Residence Patterns
5
(a)
8
Horticulturalists
6
4
Frequency
2
0
(b)
8
Hunter-gatherers
6
4
2
0
0.30
0.35
0.40
0.45
0.50
0.55
0.60
0.65
0.70
0.75
Helm’s measure
Figure 2 Frequency distribution of Helm’s measure for 34 lowland
horticulturalists (a, mean = 0.46, sd = 0.07) compared to 33 hunter-gatherer
societies (b, mean = 0.53, sd = 0.08). Helm’s measure is the sum of all adult
primary kin living with an average man divided by the sum of all primary kin living
with both an average man and an average woman.
that household and does not specify the degree of social integration into
residential groups, both of which are difficult to address given the available
ethnographic data. A convenient aspect of Helm’s measure is that it does not
vary systematically with the size of residential units. While total kin counts
do increase with residential group size, the increase is similar for both men
and women.
Results have confirmed suspicions that there is considerable variation in
residence patterns both within and between human societies that has led to
their characterization as primarily multilocal in nature with both males and
females commonly dispersing or residing with natal families. In fact, Helm’s
measure averages 0.53 for hunter-gatherers (slightly “patrilocal”) and 0.46
for horticulturalists (slightly “matrilocal”). Adult brothers and sisters often
coreside in both samples and there is no overall tendency in hunter-gatherers
for either men or women to live with more parents or offspring as would
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
be expected if patrilocality (or matrilocality) were indeed a core human tendency. The only consistent male-biased kin category is a preference for men
to live with brothers more frequently than with sisters. In Amazonian horticultural societies, the only bias is a slight tendency for women to live with
more kin (despite a traditional anthropological notion that most tropical forest cultures were patrilocal). Slight matrilocality may very well be a recently
derived feature of lowland South American societies and not indicative of
ancient human social structure. Statistical patterns of coresidence, including
both individual kin counts and Helm’s measure, do match to some degree
with ethnographically-reported postmarital residence typologies, although
there are enough borderline cases and outright exceptions to make one nervous to rely simply on typology.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Explaining variation in residence patterns remains a formidable task. Some
potentially important but underexplored variables include the relative
economic importance of fishing versus hunting versus agriculture, value of
brideservice, internal versus external warfare, brother-brother competition
over mates, male or female cooperative labor, length of extended male
absences, rates of wife capture, costs of obliging kin, and demographic
stochasticity. Most of these variables are likely to affect residence strategies
but are difficult to quantify given the generally anecdotal nature of the
ethnographic record. We do note that lowland Amazonians are traditionally
more warlike than the hunter-gatherer sample and yet lowlanders are actually more matrilocal and show less of a brother-brother bias than that seen in
hunter-gatherers. Tentatively, it seems that those Amazonians traditionally
under strong pressure of internal conflict within ethnolinguistic boundaries
do emphasize brother-brother coresidence, whereas those under mostly
external conflict, which potentially requires more male absence, are more
matrilocal, as has been supported in a global sample of human cultures.
It can be difficult to clearly distinguish actual decisions made by individuals, and the on-the-ground availability of kin of different categories,
from preferences for particular residence situations that may not be realized because of demographic constraints. Helm’s measure using actual
coresidence information may offer some advantages over standard anthropological typologies by reporting and comparing counts of coresident kin,
but stated cultural “rules” may still be informative, however, since one
cannot clearly distinguish moves between segments within villages from
coresidence in the natal house when censuses are not specific to multiple
scales of analysis. In some cases women live with more kin at the level of
extended households, perhaps to facilitate childcare, but men live with more
Human Residence Patterns
7
kin at the village level, perhaps to facilitate male alliances. Because of these
complexities, more complete accounts of ethnographic variation should
ideally include both traditional residence typologies and actual patterns of
coresidence from censuses taken at multiple scales of community structure.
Corroborating such multiple-level census evidence with fine-grained genetic
studies would help add a much needed time component to such analyses.
Chapais (2008) has developed a model that synthesizes contemporary primate socio-ecological studies with classical studies on human kinship and
postmarital residence. His model explains how the affiliation of several men
to the same woman, related to each other as consanguineal (blood) and affinal
kin (in-laws), ameliorates hostile between-group relations and allows visiting and opportunistic coresidence in human meta-group social structures
(multiple residential bands exchanging spouses, goods, and information).
Long-term cooperation among adult brothers, sisters, and bilateral kin may
have emerged from a novel and flexible human residence system facilitated
by pair bonding (marriage) and recognition of fathers. Other primates lack a
meta-group structure because either males or females generally emigrate at
maturity without a system of exchange, a pattern that mostly isolates kin
lineages to single communities. Human coresidence studies then provide
support for the importance of long-term sibling and bilateral kin cooperation as predicted from this model where amicable between-group relations
are facilitated by visiting and opportunistic coresidence. Meta-group social
structure serves to ramp up the scale of warfare by uniting multiple lineages,
villages, and even chiefdoms against other large confederations. Questions
of how and when this human social structure evolved and its effects on cooperation and cultural capacity remain an important key to understanding the
emergence of human uniqueness.
REFERENCES
Chapais, B. (2008). Primeval kinship: How pair-bonding gave birth to human society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Copeland, S. R., Sponheimer, M., de Ruiter, D. J., Lee-Thorp, J. A., Codron, D., le
Roux, P. J., . . ., Richards, M. P. (2011). Strontium isotope evidence for landscape
use by early hominins. Nature, 474(7349), 76–78.
Ember, C. (1978). Myths about hunter-gatherers. Ethnology, 17, 439–448.
Hill, K., Walker, R. S., Bozicevic, M., Eder, J., Headland, T., Hewlett, B., . . ., Wood,
B. (2011). Co-residence patterns in hunter-gatherer societies show unique human
social structure. Science, 331, 1286–1289.
Lalueza-Fox, C., Rosas, A., Estalrrich, A., Gigli, E., Campos, P. F., García-Tabernero,
A., . . ., de la Rasilla, M.. (2011). Genetic evidence for patrilocal mating behavior
among Neandertal groups. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(1),
250–253.
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Marlowe, F. W. (2004). Marital residence among foragers. Current Anthropology, 45,
277–284.
Seielstad, M. T., Minch, E., & Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. (1998). Genetic evidence for a
higher female migration rate in humans. Nature genetics, 20(3), 278–280.
Vigilant, L., & Langergraber, K. E. (2011). Inconclusive evidence for patrilocality in
Neandertals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 108(18), E87.
Walker, R. S., Beckermann, S., Flinn, M. V., Gurven, M., von Rueden, C., Kramer, K.
L., . . ., Hill, K. R. (2013). Living with kin in lowland horticultural societies. Current
Anthropology, 54, 96–103.
Wilkins, J. F. (2006). Unraveling male and female histories from human genetic data.
Current Opinion in Genetics & Development, 16(6), 611–617.
Wrangham, R. W. (1986). Ecology and social relationships in two species of chimpanzee. In D. I. Rubenstein & R. W. Wrangham (Eds.), Ecological aspects of social
evolution: Birds and mammals (pp. 352–378). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
ROBERT S. WALKER SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Robert S. Walker is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Missouri. Rob specializes in comparative analyses of human culture
and has been collecting comparative human databases over the last decade,
in particular for global samples of hunter-gatherers and for lowland South
American populations.
Personal webpage: http://anthropology.missouri.edu/?q=node/84
Database for Indigenous Cultural Evolution: http://dice.missouri.edu
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