Correction: The Myth of Man the Hunter: Women’s contribution to the hunt across ethnographic contexts
Year: 2024
Type: erratum
Abstract: After publication of this article [1], concerns were raised about the reliability and replicability of the results.The authors report that while some of the concerns raised reflect ongoing, open questions in the field, some aspects of the methodology could benefit from more detail.This notice seeks to provide additional nuance and methodological information to further conversations about this topic.The data on hunting and how these data were identified and extracted from D-PLACE did not initially include page numbers.The updated data table with page numbers included has now been provided as Supporting Information with this notice. Additional Methodological Information Definition of "forager"The word 'forager' is often used by anthropologists to imply a member of a small-scale subsistence group who gains access to diverse or varying foods around a daily or seasonal basis.It can imply a highly mobile lifestyle, but also does not have to, as some foragers are referred to as 'semi-sedentary foragers' [2].A broad use of the word forager is not atypical; small-scale "horticulturalists" or "agriculturalists" who also hunt and gather (as do the groups in this study) are regularly included under the umbrella of "forager."The term foraging is considered to imply small-scale subsistence, and to include hunting (even when the group also uses horticulture) [3].Whereas people might have personal preferences about the term that is used, the majority of anthropologists see the word forager as inclusive of small-scale societies that practice a wide range of seasonally varying activities that can include hunting, gathering, horticulture, and agriculture [4-6].These are not rigid boxes for small human populations and we continue to be comfortable with the broad reaching meaning of forager which includes smallscale groups who participate in seasonal foraging and hunting, as well as seasonal production of some crops.Regardless, concerns that the diversity of groups included in Anderson et al.'s study might have skewed the results are unwarranted as the five groups identified as being of a broader definition of foraging have the exact same percentage as the group as a whole, namely 80% show evidence of women killing terrestrial vertebrates. Selection criteria for the included societiesThe groups were chosen because books or papers about them relating to subsistence economy were identified in D-PLACE.D-PLACE was initially developed as a place to identify linguistic groups, and as such only a small fraction of all the groups had initial indications that subsistence information was known for the groups.Once we had the smaller dataset of groups with known subsistence strategies, we began the work of determining which groups had further information about specific food acquisition methods.This involved looking for books or
Source: PLoS ONE
Authors: Abigail Anderson, Sophia Chilczuk, Kaylie Nelson, Roxanne Ruther, Cara Wall-Scheffler
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,290
OpenAlex ID: W4401747180