This paper builds on previous Austronesian dispersal research that indicated rituals and social complexity gave rise to each other, by examining if marital residence and initiation rites co-evolved during the dispersal. Using a phylogenetic test and initiation data from 79 societies, the authors found evidence that female and male initiation rites co-evolved during the dispersal and were most stable when both initiation rites were present. The authors also suggest that proto-Austronesian society probably lacked initiation rites and such rites only developed later.

In this paper, the authors utilize phylogenetic methods to reconstruct the evolution of land tenure norms among 97 Austronesian societies. They coded these norms for each society as none (N), group (G), group-kin (K), and individual (I). After formulating various models of evolution through these various stages, they used Bayesian analysis to determine support for each. They conclude with remarks about this type of evolutionary phylogenetic research as a form of "virtual archeology."

The authors of this exploratory study tested predictions from five different theoretical models for the evolution of ethnoscientific expertise. They claim support for three of the models. They then compared cultural variables and their five models to three different knowledge domains: conceptual (unable to be easily observed), motor (easily observable), and medicinal. Their results indicate that their cultural transmission model is associated with the motor knowledge domain and that their proprietary knowledge model is associated with the medicinal knowledge domain.

Aiming to better understand human demographic and dispersal history, the study uses Bayesian phylogenetic comparative methods to trace post-marital residence and cultural changes among 27 Indo-European and 135 Austronesian languages. They suggest that changes from uxorilocality to other types of residences (neolocality and virolocality) are more common than the inverse transitions. The results are generally supported with one exception: Austronesian societies have a higher rate of transition from neolocality to uxorilocality (1.5) than the other way around (0.9). Other relevant findings are that proto-Indo-European societies tend to follow virilocality, while proto-Malayo-Polynesian uxorilocality. There is a commonality for both language families to present instability of uxorilocality and unusual loss of uxorilocality.

Using Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian phylogenetic comparative methods, this study aims to answer how cultural meanings and linguistic forms develop in kinship terminology focusing on sibling terminology. It tests sequential models of change of sibling terminologies among the Austronesian language family to reconstruct: the historical state and evolutionary change of relative age and relative sex; whether these distinctions have independent or dependent evolutionary trajectories; and whether opposite-sex distinctions might have developed when no such distinction previously existed. The results suggest that the trajectories are independent and that there was an initial absence of relative sex distinction. Other findings are that the transitions from absence to complex elaborated terminologies and the disruption of elaborate distinctions are very unusual.

This study seeks to shed light on the practice of entomophagy (insect consumption) across human population and seeks to explain the variability in its practice. The author explore potential ecological predictors for insect consumption (climate, subsistence practices, other available food resources, dietary needs) as well as cultural predictors (social transmission, cultural norms, evolution, and shift). Ultimately, the author concludes that entomophagy may be a useful medium through which to examine the interaction between social learning, subsistence strategies, and modernization.

The author explicitly defines and provides code for male and female age organizations and secret societies in Africa, as well as their significant sociopolitical roles within society. The author conducts preliminary analysis using the codes to explore characteristics and regional patterns of such organizations and societies. The analysis is compared to existing studies in order to assess the code and better understand cross-cultural patterns and variances. The author identifies the usefulness of the code beyond Africa, and discusses avenues for future research. No explicit hypotheses were tested, but Ericksen includes some descriptive generalizations.

In this article, the authors seek to understand dog-human coevolution by considering predictors of different aspects of dog-human relationships across cultures. In order to measure dog-human relationships, the researchers created three indexes: dogs' utility for humans (DUH), humans' utility for dogs (HUD), and the personhood of dogs (PD). Each of these indexes were tested against various pre-coded variables that were empirically and theoretically relevant to this subject.

Drawing from previous theories on the cultural variation of depression, this article tested the relationship between 24 sociocultural and ecological factors and the prevalence of depression across 195 countries and territories. The authors first conducted a zero-order association test to find the most contributory factors. Those variables were further tested in a regression model, and controlled for the under-reporting of depression by measuring the number of healthcare workers per capita. The authors found that cultural individualism was the only factor that positively predicted depression prevalence in a multiple regression model.

Population size is generally assumed to play a pivotal role in the evolution of languages and cultures, but the expected patterns and potential mechanisms of change are unsettled. Theoretical models are limited by this uncertainty because they require making prior assumptions about language evolution. Using a sample of 20 Polynesian languages, authors test the effect of population size on the gain, loss, and total change of basic vocabulary words.