Food transfers among Hiwi foragers of Venezuela: Tests of reciprocity

Although food sharing has been observed in many traditional societies, we s till do not have a deep understanding of how various ecological conditions produce variation in who gives and who receives specific resources. To unde rstand better the behavioral ecology of food sharing we present data collec ted with the Hiwi of Venezuela and focus on two questions: (a) How do chara cteristics of food resources and acquirers determine how much is transfered to others? (b) How do characteristics of nuclear families A and B influenc e how much is transferred between A and B? We use path modeling in an attem pt to tease apart the relative contribution of biological kinship, geograph ical proximity between households, family size, and quantities family B gav e to family A on the expected quantities that family A gives to family B. R eciprocal altruism is shown to be an important link in the chain of factors , but not in the tit-for-tat form common in theoretical treatments of recip rocity.