2023/06/28 by Abigail Anderson, Sophia Chilczuk, Kaylie Nelson +2 · 1 voice · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · Health Professions · #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Indigenous Studies and Ecology #Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
paper · pdf · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0287101
openalex publication_date 2023/06/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
The sexual division of labor among human foraging populations has typically been recognized as involving males as hunters and females as gatherers. Recent archeological research has questioned this paradigm with evidence that females hunted (and went to war) throughout the Homo sapiens lineage, though many of these authors assert the pattern of women hunting may only have occurred in the past. The current project gleans data from across the ethnographic literature to investigate the prevalence of women hunting in foraging societies in more recent times. Evidence from the past one hundred years supports archaeological finds from the Holocene that women from a broad range of cultures intentionally hunt for subsistence. These results aim to shift the male-hunter female-gatherer paradigm to account for the significant role females have in hunting, thus dramatically shifting stereotypes of labor, as well as mobility.