This study presents a theory of land inheritance that "focuses on the incentives that land inheritence rules create for potential heirs" and tests this theory on a cross-cultural sample.

This study examines land ownership and territoriality among hunter-gatherers in relation to resource density and predictability and defense technology. A model is presented and briefly tested on a cross-cultural sample of 14 hunter-gatherer societies. Results suggest that societies in more resource-rich areas will be more territorial than societies in less resource-rich areas.

The second and third parts of this book classify the economic systems of foraging and agricultural societies in the SCCS based on correlations between their institutions of property an distribution. These economic types are then examined for relationships with other social, political, demographic, and environmental factors in order to draw tentative conclusions regarding the origins of the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. The fourth part of the book uses cross-national data to examine similar associations in industrial/service economies, and is not included here.

This article suggests that Spiro's (1965) study on typology of social structure used a biased cross-cultural sample and possibly obscured regional patterns in data. Hypotheses related to marital structure, descent rules, food production and social stratification are tested.

This paper investigates five different economic types of foragers: classic, transitional system, politically oriented, economically oriented, and intangibles-oriented. The author asserts that these economic types “are not mere epiphenomena of the oft-discussed social structural or political forces but, rather, are special characteristics that must be independently taken into account” (418). A myriad of environmental, subsistence, political, and social variables are examined: some differed significantly across the five economic types of foragers, but others such as famine threat, conflict, locational fixity, marital form, and postmarital residence did not differ between types.

This article tests Randall Collin's 1975 theory that political-economic factors, rather than family/kinship factors, predict the degree of sexual stratification in a given society. A multivariate model is tested and findings contradict the theory.

This article presents a representative theoretical model of the transition to agriculture. Empirical results from a cross-cultural sample provide support for the model. Results suggest that agriculture is associated with population density, technological sophistication, environment, and proximity to agricultural hearths, such as the Fertile Crescent.

This study develops a model of the conditions under which a societies switch from a anarchy to a hierarchy. Empirical results suggest that the presence of police, technological sophistication, population density, and food storage are positively associated with the presence of a territorial hierarchy.

The present research examines the residence patterns of 34 hunter-gatherer societies and 34 lowland South American horticulturalist societies using census data. Contrary to the traditional view of patrilocal postmarital residence being prevalent, the present findings suggest more multilocality in residence patterns for hunter-gatherer and horticulturalist societies. The author concludes that hunter-gatherers are slightly patrilocal and horticulturalists slightly matrilocal.

The present study aims to evaluate correlations of private property from two of Murdock's datasets, one of 147 societies (1981) and the other of 312 societies (1967). Altogether the author tested 146 variables coded by Murdock against variables regarding the ownership of land and of movables drawn from Murdock (1967), Simmons (1937), and Swanson (1960). In total, there were 51 statistically significant correlations between private property ownership and other variables. Additionally, the author summarizes the results from this article and the two that preceded it stating that throughout all of the correlations he ran, the practice of agriculture, the use of cereal grains, and the presence of castes and classes were the only variables that predicted private property in all of the datasets that were utilized.