Elspeth Ready
Research staff
Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
04103 Leipzig
phone: +49 (0) 341 3550 318
e-mail:
elspeth_ready@[>>> Please remove the text! <<<]eva.mpg.de
Research interests
I am an anthropologist and archaeologist with broad interests that originate in questions about the evolution of human subsistence adaptation and which have more recently led to a focus on using social network analysis to better incorporate social structural constraints and economic inequalities into behavioral ecological approaches to cooperation. Research based on my ethnographic fieldwork in the Canadian Arctic has focused on the role of traditional foods and food sharing in Inuit food security, resilience to climate change, and health and well-being. My archaeological research focuses on Neandertal subsistence ecology and on zooarchaeological methods.
Publications
2024
Ready, E., Ross, C., Beheim, B. A., & Parrott, J. (2024). Indigenous food production in a carbon economy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(32): e2317686121. |
Open Access2023
Collings, P., Ready, E., & Medina-Ramírez, O. (2023). An ethnographic model of stress and stress management in two Canadian Inuit communities. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 54(3). |
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Hillemann, F., Beheim, B. A., & Ready, E. (2023). Socio-economic predictors of Inuit hunting choices and their implications for climate change adaptation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 378(1889): 20220395. |
2022
Baumann, M., Ready, E., Plisson, H., Maury, S., Vanderesse, N., Coqueugniot, H., Kolobova, K., & Morin, E. (2022). Not so unusual Neanderthal bone tools: new examples from Abri Lartet, France. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 14: 200. |
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Brown, M., & Ready, E. (2022). Market integration and cooperative resource harvesting among kin, clan, and neighbors in rural China. Ecology and Society, 27(4): 17. |
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Jones, J. H., & Ready, E. (2022). The emergent structure of subsistence risk-management networks. American Journal of Biological Anthropology, 177(S73), 92-92. |
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Larson, C., & Ready, E. (2022). Networking down: Networks, innovation, and relational labor in digital book publishing. New Media & Society. |
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Pisor, A. C., Basurto, X., Douglass, K. G., Mach, K. J., Ready, E., Tylianakis, J. M., Hazel, A., Kline, M. A., Kramer, K. L., Lansing, J. S., Moritz, M., Smaldino, P. E., Thornton, T. F., & Jones, J. H. (2022). Effective climate change adaptation means supporting community autonomy. Nature Climate Change, 12, 213-215. |
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Ready, E. (2022). Scale and Inuit social relations: Ilagit, parts of each other. In T. Widlok, & M. Dores Cruz ( |
2021
Jones, J. H., Pisor, A. C., Douglass, K. G., Bird, R. B., Ready, E., Hazel, A., Hackman, J., Kramer, K. L., Kohler, T. A., Pontzer, H., & Towner, M. C. (2021). How can evolutionary and biological anthropologists engage broader audiences? American Journal of Human Biology, 33(4): e23592. |
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Jones, J. H., Ready, E., & Pisor, A. C. (2021). Want climate‐change adaptation? Evolutionary theory can help. American Journal of Human Biology, 33(4): e23539. |
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Morin, E., Boileau, A., & Ready, E. (2021). A refitting experiment on long bone identification. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 31(4), 650-662. |
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Ready, E., & Collings, P. (2021). “All the problems in the community are multifaceted and related to each other”: Inuit concerns in an era of climate change. American Journal of Human Biology, 33(4): e23516. |
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Ready, E., & Collings, P. (2021). Inuit and the "problem" of climate change: Local perspectives on contemporary challenges. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 174(S71), 88-88. |
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Ready, E., & Price, M. H. (2021). Human behavioral ecology and niche construction. Evolutionary Anthropology, 30(1), 71-83. |
2020
Koster, J., Mcelreath, R., Hill, K., Yu, D., Shepard, G., Vliet, N. V., Gurven, M., Kaplan, H., Trumble, B., Bird, R. B., Bird, D., Codding, B., Coad, L., Pacheco-Cobos, L., Winterhalder, B., Lupo, K., Schmitt, D., Sillitoe, P., Franzen, M., Alvard, M., Venkataraman, V., Kraft, T., Endicott, K., Beckerman, S., Marks, S. A., Headland, T., Pangau-Adam, M., Siren, A., Kramer, K., Greaves, R., Reyes-García, V., Guèze, M., Duda, R., Fernández-Llamazares, Á., Gallois, S., Napitupulu, L., Ellen, R., Ziker, J., Nielsen, M. R., Ready, E., Healey, C., & Ross, C. (2020). The life history of human foraging: Cross-cultural and individual variation. Science Advances, 6(26): eaax9070. |
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Ready, E. (2020). Climate colonialism and “adaptive capacity“ in the Arctic. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 171(S69), 229-229. |
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Ready, E., Habecker, P., Abadie, R., Dávila-Torres, C. A., Rivera-Villegas, A., Khan, B., & Dombrowski, K. (2020). Comparing social network structures generated through sociometric and ethnographic methods. Field Methods, 32(4), 416-432. |
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Ready, E., Habecker, P., Abadie, R., Khan, B., & Dombrowski, K. (2020). Competing forces of withdrawal and disease avoidance in the risk networks of people who inject drugs. PLoS One, 15(6): e0235124. |
2019
Morin, E., Beauval, C., Boileau, A., Ready, E., & Laroulandie, V. (2019). The number of distinct elements: Extending a landmark-based counting unit to other taxa. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 24, 773-784. |
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Power, E. A., & Ready, E. (2019). Cooperation beyond consanguinity: Post-marital residence, delineations of kin, and social support among South Indian Tamils. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, 374(1780): 20180070. |
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Ready, E. (2019). Why subsistence matters. Hunter Gatherer Research, 3(4), 635-649. |
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Ready, E., & Morin, E. (2019). Preliminary analysis of faunal remains from three Middle Paleolithic deposits in Charente, France. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 24, 290-301. |
2018
Bliege Bird, R., Ready, E., & Power, E. A. (2018). The social significance of subtle signals. Nature Human Behaviour, 2(7), 452-457. |
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Power, E. A., & Ready, E. (2018). Building bigness: Reputation, prominence, and social capital in rural South India. American Anthropologist, 120(3), 444-459. |
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Ready, E. (2018). Sharing-based social capital associated with harvest production and wealth in the Canadian Arctic. PLoS One, 13(3): e0193759. |
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Ready, E. (2018). Who, being loved, is poor?: Poverty, marriage, and changing family structures in the Canadian Arctic. Human Organization, 77(2), 122-134. |
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Ready, E., & Collings, P. (2018). Rethinking “big problems” in Arctic health. Anthropology News, 59(1), e71-e76. |
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Ready, E., & Power, E. A. (2018). Why wage earners hunt: Food sharing, social structure, and influence in an Arctic mixed economy. Current Anthropology, 59(1), 74-97. |
2017
Morin, E., Ready, E., Boileau, A., Beauval, C., & Coumont, M.-P. (2017). Problems of identification and quantification in archaeozoological analysis, Part I: Insights from a blind test. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 24(3), 886-937. |
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Morin, E., Ready, E., Boileau, A., Beauval, C., & Coumont, M.-P. (2017). Problems of identification and quantification in archaeozoological analysis, Part II: Presentation of an alternative counting method. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 24(3), 938-973. |
2016
Ready, E. (2016). Challenges in the assessment of Inuit food security. Arctic, 69(3), 266-280. |
2015
Ready, E. (2015). Ensuring country food access for a food secure future in Nunavik. Arctic and International Relations Series: Quebec policy on the Arctic: Challenges and perspectives, (1), 50-54. |
2013
Morin, E., & Ready, E. (2013). Foraging goals and transport decisions in Western Europe during the paleolithic and early holocene. In J. L. Clark, & J. D. Speth ( |
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Ready, E. (2013). Neandertal foraging during the late Mousterian in the Pyrenees: New insights based on faunal remains from Gatzarria Cave. Journal of Archaeological Science, 40(3), 1568-1578. |
2010
Ready, E. (2010). Neandertal man the hunter: A history of Neandertal subsistence. vis-à-vis: Explorations in Anthropology, 10(1), 58-80. |