Outputs (25)

The evolution of cultural diversity in Pama-Nyungan Australia (2024)
Journal Article
Learmouth, D., Layton, R. H., & Tehrani, J. J. (2024). The evolution of cultural diversity in Pama-Nyungan Australia. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 11(1), Article 945. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03386-7

Explaining the processes that produce cultural diversity has long been a focus of anthropological study. Whilst linguistic diversity has frequently been shown to be associated with population splitting during migrations, much less is known about the... Read More about The evolution of cultural diversity in Pama-Nyungan Australia.

Scars for survival: high cost male initiation rites are strongly associated with desert habitat in Pama-Nyungan Australia (2024)
Journal Article
Learmouth, D., Layton, R., & Tehrani, J. (2024). Scars for survival: high cost male initiation rites are strongly associated with desert habitat in Pama-Nyungan Australia. Evolution and Human Behavior, 45(2), 193-202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2024.02.003

Costly ritual behaviours have frequently been of interest to evolutionary researchers seeking to understand whether they have an adaptive benefit. Here we examine the costliness of initiation rituals across a large group of hunter-gather societies in... Read More about Scars for survival: high cost male initiation rites are strongly associated with desert habitat in Pama-Nyungan Australia.

Kinship Without Words (2020)
Journal Article
Layton, R. (2021). Kinship Without Words. Biological Theory, 16(3), 135-147. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-020-00346-7

This article seeks to identify at what point in hominid evolution language would have become adaptive. It starts by recalling the distinction between kin-selected altruism and reciprocal altruism, noting that the former is characteristic of social in... Read More about Kinship Without Words.

Antiquity and social functions of multi-level social organisation among hunter-gatherers. (2012)
Journal Article
Layton, R., O'Hara, S., & Bilsborough, A. (2012). Antiquity and social functions of multi-level social organisation among hunter-gatherers. International Journal of Primatology, 33(5), 1215-1245. https://doi.org/10.1007/s+10764-012-9634.z

Foraging and farming as niche construction: stable and unstable adaptations (2011)
Journal Article
Rowley-Conwy, P., & Layton, R. (2011). Foraging and farming as niche construction: stable and unstable adaptations. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 366(1566), 849-862. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0307

Aesthetics - the approach from anthropology. (2011)
Book Chapter
Layton, R. (2011). Aesthetics - the approach from anthropology. In E. Schellekens, & P. Goldie (Eds.), Philosphical Aesthetics and Aesthetic Psychology (208-222). Oxford University Press

human social evolution: a comparison of hunter-gatherer and chimpanzee social organisation (2010)
Book Chapter
Layton, R., & O'Hara, S. (2010). human social evolution: a comparison of hunter-gatherer and chimpanzee social organisation. In R. Dunbar, C. Gamble, & J. Gowlett (Eds.), Social brain, distributed mind (85-115). British Academy

Why social scientists don't like Darwin and what can be done about it. (2010)
Journal Article
Layton, R. (2010). about it. Journal of evolutionary psychology (Budapest. Online), 8(2), 139-152. https://doi.org/10.1556/jep.8.2010.2.4

Crisp snapshots and fuzzy trends. (2008)
Book Chapter
Layton, R. (2008). Crisp snapshots and fuzzy trends. In D. Papagianni, R. Layton, & H. Maschner (Eds.), Time and change: archaeological and anthropological perspectives on the long term (1-13). Oxbow

Discusses ways in which human agency revealed in archaeological moments such as tool-making at Boxgrove or dietary remains from a buried NW Coast native American village can be integrated nto the study of long term adaptive or social evolutionary tre... Read More about Crisp snapshots and fuzzy trends..

What can ethnography tell us about human social evolution? (2008)
Book Chapter
Layton, R. (2008). What can ethnography tell us about human social evolution?. In N. Allen, H. Callan, R. Dunbar, & W. James (Eds.), Early human kinship: from sex to social reproduction (113-127). (1). Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444302714.ch6

critically reviews methods for reconstructing past behaviour from ethnography, compares chimpanzee and hunter-gatherer social behaviour, and rejects some hypotheses proposed by other authors in the same volume.