The Behavioral Ecology of Food Sharing among North Siberian Foragers

History/ Previous Research

Ust Avam, population 670, was the focal community for 12 months of my doctoral research. Ust Avam is home to two indigenous populations: the Nganasan and the Dolgan. The Nganasan traditionally lived across the central Taimyr tundra and forest-tundra transition, where they practiced caribou hunting, fishing, and small-game and fowl hunting. Small herds of domestic reindeer were kept for transportation purposes. Currently, the majority of the 1,200 Nganasan live in three permanent settlements, alongside the Dolgan. One of these settlements is Ust Avam. The Nganasan language is related to Nenets and Enets, the three together making up the Samoyedic branch of the Uralic language family. The largest native group in the Taimyr is the Dolgan, who traditionally lived from Dudinka to Khatanga and in the northwest Anabar District of Yakutia. The Dolgan formed from several groups and traditionally practiced reindeer herding, caribou hunting, fishing, and fur-bearer trapping. The Dolgan language is a creole of Yakut, a Turkic language, and Evenk, a Tungusic language, and is mutually unintelligible with Nganasan. For this reason, the lingua franca in Ust Avam is Russian.The native population of the Avam tundra gradually moved to the permanent settlement Ust Avam beginning in the early 1970s, as the newly formed government hunting enterprise Taimyrskii constructed apartments and offered jobs. As Soviet workers, the Dolgan and Nganasan in Ust Avam still practiced traditional activities (e.g., arctic fox trapping, fishing, and caribou hunting), albeit with the benefits of modern implements and under production quotas, or plans, assigned by the state. Partially as a result of settlement and the mechanical intensification of hunting, reindeer herding was completely phased out by 1978. Living standards for native hunters and workers in Ust Avam, as in other northern native villages, were relatively high throughout the 1980s. Native hunters were assigned territories for hunting, and the enterprise paid good salaries and supplied tools and snowmobiles, nonlocal food, and fuel. Many women were included in the state enterprise, producing crafts and tundra clothing for brigades. They also worked in administrative and other budgetary posts. Educational opportunities and access to consumer goods improved throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Travel by commuter planes and helicopters to Norilsk, the region's industrial city, and Dudinka, the regional capital, were frequent and affordable (see Map, Appendix). The economic and cultural development of the 1970s and 1980s stands in stark contrast to the post-soviet period, which has become characterized by unemployment, isolation from urban centers, and a refocus on subsistence production.

Methods

The research design for this project will generate data relevant to test the hypotheses discussed above. Following Kaplan and Hill (1985b), Betzig and Turke (1986), and Bliege Bird and Bird 1997), the research instruments will document the following for each instance of transfer and sharing: 1) names and relationships of producers and consumers; 2) the resource type (reindeer, fish, etc.); 3) the original acquirer, butcher, and intermediary transmitters of the resource being consumed; 4) whose equipment was used, what hunting method was used, where the resource was acquired, and how long it took; 5) the purpose of the hunt; and 6) where possible, the amount consumed or transferred and the amount on hand. In addition, self-report explanations for food transfer will be documented. A daily household inventory study will weigh stores of meat and fish on seven consecutive days, at least once every four weeks (Dufour and Teufel 1995) using a spring scale or standard units where applicable. Marginal value will be calculated by comparing the amount of that food item on hand with the amount given. Changes in quantity on hand should influence the value of the food to the giver under a marginal-valuation assumption. Following the methodology used by Kaplan and Hill (1985b) and Betzig and Turke (1986), focal individual studies and economic diaries will document nutritional needs and source of food. The diary will be in the form of a preprinted daily checklist to be completed on a minimum of seven consecutive days, once every four weeks, by one member of each participating household. The focused economic diary will document quantities of inflows and outflows of resources, partners, motives, and timing. During focal individual studies, the investigator will accompany hunting party trips of seven to fourteen day lengths (Johnson and Sackett 1998). All resources procured will be counted or weighed. Consumption will be sampled by: 1) recording an entire day's activities of a single individual, randomly selected; 2) recording all the consumers of a particular food; and 3) recording all the activities of all persons within observation distance every ten minutes throughout the day. Participants will be compensated with outdoor gear or other goods and services upon completion of the project, following my previous methodology. This form of compensation usually requires taking orders and shipping by airmail. A service I provide to all families in the community is family photography. This service is also costly, requiring development, printing, and mailing.

During dissertation research I conducted a complete community census of Ust Avam. Households were located, and genealogies were collected and verified by third parties (Ziker 1998c). This information will be updated for this project to test the altruistic-resource-transfer hypothesis. Genealogical relatedness will be calculated on software that uses Wright's inbreeding coefficient and sums multiple relatedness loops between individuals (Chagnon and Bryants 1984). Household relatedness will be calculated as the average of each pair of individuals in each household.

The analysis of the data collected in the household inventory studies, focal studies, and economic diaries will be conducted according to the characteristics and predictions of the three models under consideration. The following table summarizes these models. A plus sign indicates the presence of the characteristic and a minus sign indicates its absence. Plus/minus signs indicate that the model is indifferent according to this characteristic.