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potential cross-cultural study Research questions: 

(The questions/ideas below require that you define the place/s and times you will investigate the problem.) 

Do men or women take the primary role in agriculture (or pottery, house building, fuel gathering child raising, inheritance, politics, household leadership, warfare)? 

What is the relationship between settlement patterns and the extent of warfare in a region?

What is the relationship between technological innovation and religion or (what else)?

What is the relationship between household architecture styles (e.g., above ground, below ground, masonry, wattle and daub, single-family, multi-family) and x environmental characteristic (e.g., climate, coastal, desert, etc.)? 

What is the relationship between irrigation and the development of social hierarchy? 

What factors influence the presence/absence of monogamy and polygyny? 

What is the relationship between x type of environment (e.g., arid, coastal, mountainous, etc.) and settlement patterns? 

Does drought cause culture change? 

Identify at least 5 hunter/gatherer societies that exist in the world today. Conduct a comparative study with the intent of identifying 
     reasons these societies are or are not on a path toward city or state formation. 

What is the influence of climate (or conflict, or rituals/beliefs/religion, population level changes) on household architecture in the Southwest, Northwest, Mississippian (or elsewhere)? 

Identify 10 archaeologically-know cultural traditions that collapsed (define "collapse") or substantially transformed (define "transformed") in North America.  Examine the potential influence of the same 5 factors (e.g., conflict, climate, environmental impacts, rapid population increases/decreases, migration, disease, etc.) on each collapse.    



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