Raymond Hames, Professor of Anthropology

I received my doctorate in anthropology from the University of California-Santa Barbara in 1978. Most of my fieldwork has been on native peoples of the Venezuelan Amazon (Yanomamö & Ye'kwana) with funding from the NSF, LSB Leakey Foundation, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. I am a human behavioral ecologist with wide research interests encompassing conservation, food & labor exchange, marriage, hunter-gatherers, small scale warfare, parental investment, time allocation and behavior observation methods.  Although now retired, I once regularly taught courses on social organization, contentious issues in anthropology, warfare in small-scale societies, and hunter-gatherers.  

I am past-president of the Evolutionary Anthropology Society of the American Anthropological Association and a consulting editor for Human Nature. and Evolution and Human Behavior  In the spring of 2020 I was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and in June of 2025 I received the Lifetime Career Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution from the Human Behavior and Evolution Society

Currently, I am engaged in a wide variety of research projects. With several colleagues I am accumulating data on the sexual division of labor from a time allocation perspective in all economic formations from hunter-gatherers, horticulturalists, agriculturalists to commercialized populations. Other projects include research comparative childcare and female same sex relationships in preindustrial societies. 

Finally, I am part of the CAMP consortium with colleagues in the School of Evolution and Social Change at ASU where we focus on improving ethnographic research methods. My online course is on how to observe and record behavior observations.

Curriculum Vitae

ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6931-3342 

 Select and Recent Publications

• "Egalitarianism and Women" (2026). Commentary in Behavioral and Brain Sciences
• "The Meanings and Dividends of Man the Hunter". Evolution and Human Behavior (2026)
  Vivek V. Venkataraman , Edward H. Hagen , Duncan Stibbard-Hawkes, Raymond Hames , Sheina Lew-Levy , Haneul Jang, Luke Glowacki, Jordie Hoffman, Karen Kramer, Helen Elizabeth Davis, Kathrine Starkweather, Barry Hewlett, Zachary H. Garfield, Robert L. Kelly 
• "Female foragers sometimes hunt, yet gendered divisions of labor are real" Evolution and Human Behavior. (2024) Vivek Venkataraman, Jordie Hoffman, Raymond B Hames, Duncan NE Stibbard-Hawkes, Karen Kramer, Robert Kelly, Kyle Farquharson, Edward H Hagen, Barry S Hewlett, Helen Elizabeth Davis, Luke Glowacki, Haneul Jang, Kristen Syme, Katie Starkweather, Sheina Lew-Levy.
• "Impediments to peace." (2024) Behavioral and Brain Sciences 47(2024): e11-e11.
• “Game Keepers and Conservation”. (2023) In The History and Environmental Impacts Hunting Deities: Supernatural Game Keepers and Animal Masters. R. Chacon, ed. Springer
• The utility of behavior observations for qualitative researchers”. (2023). In In The Handbook of Teaching Qualitative and Mixed Research Methods: A Step-by-Step Guide for Instructors.  Ruth, A., Wutich, A. and R. Bernard, eds. P. 84-87. Routledge, Oxford England. 
• Biographic Memoirs: Napoleon Chagnon (2024)1938–2019. PNAS 
• Hames, Raymond (2020) "Cultural and reproductive success and the causes of war: A Yanomamö perspective." Evolution and Human Behavior, 41(3), 183-187
• Hames, Raymond, W. Irons, M. Flinn (2020)  "In memoriam: Napoleon A. Chagnon." Evolution and Human Behavior, 41(3), 177-182. 
• Hames, Raymond (2019) "Pacifying Hunter-Gatherers, Human Nature, 30(2):155-175 
• Chagnon, N., Lynch, R., Shenk, M., Hames, R., & Flinn, M (2017).  "Cross-cousin marriage among the Yanomamo shows evidence of parent-offspring conflict and mate competition between brothers."  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(13): E2590-E2607
• Jaeggi, A. V., Kramer, K. L., Hames, R., Kiely, E. J., Gomes, C., Kaplan, H., & Gurven, M. (2017). Human grooming in comparative perspective: People in six small-scale societies groom less but socialize just as much as expected for a typical primate. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 162(4), 810-816. doi:10.1002/ajpa.23164
• “Is Male Androphilia a Context-Dependent Cross-Cultural Universal?”.  Raymond Hames, Zachary Garfield, and Melissa Garfield.  Archives of Sexual Behavior: 46 (1): 63-71. 
•  “Changes in Male Hunting” in Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, Todd K. Shackelford, editor. Springer (in press)
• “A Problematic Test of the Kin Selection Hypothesis among the Urak Lawoi of Ko Lipeh, Thailand: Commentary on Camperio Ciani, Battaglia, & Liotta (2016) Paul L. Vasey, Doug P. VanderLaan, Raymond Hames, & Amornthep Jaidee.  Journal of Sex Research.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2015.1115808
• "Kin Selection"  In David Buss, ed., The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology.  John Wiley & Sons: NY (2015)
• “Behavioral Ecology”.  (2015) In International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Pages 246–251.  Elsevier: London.
• Multilevel modeling analysis of dyadic network data with an application to Ye'kwana food sharing". American Journal of Physical Anthropology (2015).  Jeremy Koster, George Leckie, Andrew Miller, and Raymond Hames
• “Kin Selection and Sexuality” (2015). In The International Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality, edited by Patricia Whelehan and Anne Bolin. Malden, Oxford: John Wiley and Sons, Ltd.
• "Diversity in Human Behavioral Ecology".  (2014)  Human Nature 25 (4:443-447)
• Behavior Observations (2014) 
• "The “female fertility–social stratification–hypergyny” (2014) hypothesis of male homosexual preference: factual, conceptual and methodological errors in Barthes et al. [Commentary]." Evolution and Human Behavior 35(5): 445-447. VanderLaan, D. P.Doug; Zachary H Garfield; Melissa J Garfield; Jean-Baptiste Leca; Paul L Vasey; Raymond B Hames.
• Direct and Indirect Behavior Observations.  (with Michael Paolisso, 2nd author).  In R. Bernard and C. Gravlee, eds. "The Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology", Pp. 293-313, 2nd Ed., Rowland & Littlefield: Lanham. (2014).
• A life history perspective on skin cancer and the evolution of skin pigmentation. Daniel Osborne and Raymond Hames.  American Journal of Physical Anthropology (2014)
• "A survey of non-classical polyandry." Katie Starkweather and Raymond Hames.  Human Nature (2012) 23:149–17
• "Sex differences in spatial abilities: Methodological problems in Hoffman et al." Drew H. Bailey, Richard A. Lippa, Marco Del Giudice, Raymond Hames, & David C. Geary.  PNAS (letter to editor) (2012)
• "Anthropological Data Regarding the Adaptiveness of Hebephilia" (Raymond Hames and Ray Blanchard) Archives of Sexual Behavior, (2012) Volume 41, Number 4, Pages 745-74
• "Statement on the Publication of Alice Dreger's Investigation, Darkness's Descent on the American Anthropological Association: A Cautionary Tale".  (Jane Lancaster & Raymond Hames) Human Nature 22:222-223 (2011)
• Paolisso, M. and R. Hames "Methods for the Systematic Study of Human Behavior, Field Methods (2010).
• Production Decisions and Time Allocation.  In Society and Environment: Methods and Research Design.  Vaccaro, Ismael , Eric Alden Smith and Shankar Aswani (eds.)  Cambridge University Press. (2010)
• Grandparental transfers and kin selection?.  Invited and reviewed commentary on D. Coall and R. Hertwig ?Grandparental Investment: Past, Present, and Future?.  Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2010) - go to page 26.
• Meal Sharing among the Ye'kwana (With Carl McCabe) Human Nature 18 (1):1-22 (2007)
• The Ecologically Noble Savage Debate Annual Review of Anthropology 36 (2007)
• Growth rates and life histories in 22 small-scale societies (Robert Walker senior author with 12 co-authors!) American Journal of Human Biology 18:295–311 (2006)
• The Nexus of Yanomamö Growth, Health, and Demography
  In Lost Paradises and the Ethics of Research and Publication
  F. Salzano and A. Hurtado, eds. Oxford University Press.  Pp. 110-146. (With Jennifer Kuzara) (2004)
• Women's work, child care and helpers at the nest in a hunter-gatherer society. (With Patricia Draper) Human Nature, Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 319-341 (2004)
• Parental Investment and Child Health in a Yanomamö Village Suffering Short-term Food Stress.  Edward H. Hagen Raymond B. Hames, Nathan M. Craig, Matthew T. Lauer, Michael E. Price, Journal of Biosocial Sciences (2001)
• Birth Order, Sibling Investment, and Fertility among the Ju/'hoansi (!Kung), (Patricia Draper, first author) Human Nature Vol. 11, No. 2: 117-156 (2000)
• Blank Test