My research is part of a collaborative project in human behavioral ecology which focuses on explaining diversity in hunter-gatherer foraging strategies and their material traces.  We are interested in how economic pursuits affect and are affected by social strategies, including cooperation, competition, reproduction, and parenting.  Some of our current research projects include: the role of fire in land management and foraging strategies among Martu Aborigines, costly signaling and conspicuous consumption, the ecology and spatial expression of gender differences in foraging decisions, food sharing decisions and social networks, children's foraging as adaptive juvenile strategy, life history theory and human social organization, the effects of anthropogenic fire on geophyte distribution in the American West, polygyny and demography in Australia’s Western Desert, and the ethnoarchaeology of sex biased hunting strategies.

More details about our research projects can be found through Rebecca Bliege Bird.