Costly Signaling

I really like John Hawks Anthropology Weblog and urge all of you interested in those sorts of things to visit it often. Earlier this week, he commented on a journal article that tested a current anthropological theory on show-off behavior among hunter-gatherer peoples.

Traditional models of hunter-gatherer behavior used by cultural anthropologists and archaeologists have assumed that they use an optimizing hunting strategy. Hunters will use strategies that allow them to gain the most calories of meat for the least amount of effort. A new model, proposed in the early 1990s says that an optimizing strategy cannot always be assumed. Males in many cultures will often hunt "prestige" species - animals difficult to hunt or that have special cultural significance to their societies - to gain status with their fellow hunters and to impress the ladies. This behavior does not make economic sense, and the anthropologists had to invent a new nerdy piece of jargon to call it: costly signaling.

This was brought home to me by an article in American Antiquity (sorry only the abstract is available on line) by two California archaeologists last year, who argue that costly signaling explains some patterns seen in the Middle Archaic (4500 - 1000 BP) of the Great Basin.

Part of their argument rests on rock art, especially as seen at Coso, that I visited and posted on last fall. We know ethnographically that subsistence in the Great Basin was broadly based - it is a harsh environment and you can't be too picky. But the major hunting activity consisted of communal rabbit drives and antelope drives. Rock art in the midst of this area, however, doesn't portray this activity at all. It is obsessed with bighorn sheep.

There are thousands of images of sheep like on this face.

And this one.

There are no rabbits, no antelope, and hardly any deer portrayed. The historic and ethnographic accounts barely mention sheep hunting - only that it was difficult and usually conducted using dogs. Sheep bone doesn't form a significant percentage of remains from archaeological sites in the area. Yet here are sheep in their thousands portrayed with hunters and bows and atlatls.

McGuire and Hildebrandt think this is an indication of bighorn sheep as a "prestige" species for these people.

Some of you hunters should comment on the role costly signaling plays in your behavior.