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Scale matters. When conducting research and writing, scholars upscale and downscale. So do the subjects of their work – we scale, they scale. Although scaling is an integrant part of research, we rarely reflect on scaling as a practice and what happens when we engage with it in scholarly work. The contributors aim to change this: they explore the pitfalls and potentials of scaling in an interdisciplinary dialogue. The volume brings together scholars from diverse fields, working on different geographical areas and time periods, to engage with scale-conscious questions regarding human sociality, culture, and evolution.
With contributions by Nurit Bird-David, Robert L. Kelly, Charlotte Damm, Andreas Maier, Brian Codding, Elspeth Ready, Bram Tucker, Graeme Warren and others.
Thomas Widlok is professor for cultural anthropology at the University of Cologne. He completed his MSc and PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science and was a member of the CRC "Our way to Europe" funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). He is a specialist in hunter-gatherer studies.
M. Dores Cruz graduated from Binghamton University (SUNY) with a Ph.D. in anthropology. She is currently a lecturer at the Institute for African Studies and Egyptology, Universität zu Köln, and specializes on African historical archaeology, landscape anthropology, and colonialism.
Frontmatter 1
Contents 5
Introduction: Why scale matters 7
How do we scale hunter-gatherers' social networks? 19
What good is archaeology? 39
Upscaling forager mobility and broadening forager relations 59
Scales of interaction 83
A large-scale view on 'small-scale societies' 111
Socioecological factors influence hunter-gatherers 131
Scale and Inuit social relations 155
Mikea, Malagasy, or hunter-gatherers? 179
Scaling an island of hunter-gatherers 207
Authors' biographies 227