SelectedWorks - Kathryn E. Demps

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Selected Works of Kathryn E. Demps

Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology

Dr. Kathryn Demps joined the faculty of the Department of Anthropology at Boise State University as a visiting professor for the 2012-2013 school year, and then joined the tenure-track faculty for 2013-2014. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis where she specialized in the study of the evolution of human behavior, focusing on human evolutionary ecology. Her work on the transmission of local ecological knowledge among a honey-collecting tribe in South India describes the cultural learning process from childhood to old age. Dr. Demps currently studies how knowledge and behavior interact with local ecologies by examining the conflict of interest between formal schooling and knowledge about the forest; economic pressures and marketing behavior; and group formation and cooperation. She is a member of the American Anthropological Association, the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, and the Ethnoecology Laboratory of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and has served as the faculty advisor the the Boise State Sustainability Club.

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About Kathryn E. Demps

Dr. Kathryn Demps joined the faculty of the Department of Anthropology at Boise State University as a visiting professor for the 2012-2013 school year, and then joined the tenure-track faculty for 2013-2014. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis where she specialized in the study of the evolution of human behavior, focusing on human evolutionary ecology. Her work on the transmission of local ecological knowledge among a honey-collecting tribe in South India describes the cultural learning process from childhood to old age. Dr. Demps currently studies how knowledge and behavior interact with local ecologies by examining the conflict of interest between formal schooling and knowledge about the forest; economic pressures and marketing behavior; and group formation and cooperation. She is a member of the American Anthropological Association, the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, and the Ethnoecology Laboratory of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and has served as the faculty advisor the the Boise State Sustainability Club.

Present	Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Boise State University
Institution Organization Position Type Position Title Time Period to Options Current Position Affiliate my profile with this Institution

Human Behavioral and Evolutionary Ecology and Cultural Evolution

Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Introduction to Physical Anthropology
Kinship and Social Organization
Behavior and Evolutionary Biology of the Human Lifecycle
Evolution of Human Nature
Quantitative Field Methods

E-mail: kathryndemps@boisestate.edu

http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2308-4916

Articles (14)

From Mind to Matter: Patterns of Innovation in the Archaeological Record and the Ecology of Social Learning (Kathryn Demps, Nicole M. Herzog and Matt Clark) American Antiquity (2024)

Archaeology and cultural evolution theory both predict that environmental variation and population size drive the likelihood of inventions (via individual learning) and their conversion to population-wide innovations (via social uptake). We use the case study ...

Decreased Cortisol Among Hikers Who Preferentially Visit and Value Biodiverse Riparian Zones (Ellie Opdahl, Kathryn Demps and Julie A. Heath) Scientific Reports (2021)

While outdoor recreationists often report increases to their well-being for time spent in nature, the mechanisms through which local ecologies affect human health have been difficult to quantify, and thus to manage. We combine data ...

Small Group Learning is Associated with Reduced Salivary Cortisol and Testosterone in Undergraduate Students (Kristin Snopkowski, Kathryn Demps, Ross Griffiths, et al.) Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (2019)

Small group learning activities have been shown to improve student academic performance and educational outcomes. Yet, we have an imperfect understanding of the mechanisms by which this occurs. Group learning may mediate student stress by ...

“Every Tradesman Must Also Be a Merchant”: Behavioral Ecology and Household‑Level Production for Barter and Trade in Premodern Economies (Kathryn Demps and Bruce Winterhalder) Journal of Archaeological Research (2019)

While archaeologists now have demonstrated that barter and trade of material commodities began in prehistory, theoretical efforts to explain these findings are just beginning. We adapt the central place foraging model from behavioral ecology and ...

Group Characteristics Influence Distribution Patterns of Off-Road Vehicle Recreation within a Complex Trail System in Southwest Idaho (Eric Frey, Kathryn Demps, Ben Pauli, et al.) Leisure Sciences (2018)

Recreation on public lands is growing and is increasingly recognized as an ecosystem service providing improved health, connection to nature, and social time while also disturbing and degrading ecosystems. Human impacts must be managed, but ...

Contribution of Natural and Economic Capital to Subjective Well-Being: Empirical Evidence from a Small-Scale Society in Kodagu (Karnataka), India (Francisco Zorondo-Rodríguez, Mar Grau-Satorras, Jenu Kalla, et al.) Social Indicators Research (2016)

Subjective well-being is determined by several types of sources of satisfaction, defined as forms of capitals. Most of research has been focused on the links between economic capital and well-being, neglecting the contribution of other ...

Cultural Group Selection Plays an Essential Role in Explaining Human Cooperation: A Sketch of the Evidence (Kathryn Demps) Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2016)

Human cooperation is highly unusual. We live in large groups composed mostly of non-relatives. Evolutionists have proposed a number of explanations for this pattern, including cultural group selection and extensions of more general processes such ...

Skills, Division of Labor, and Economies of Scale Among Amazonian Hunters and South Indian Honey Collectors (Paul L. Hooper, Kathryn Demps, Michael Gurven, et al.) Philosophical Transactions B (2015)

In foraging and other productive activities, individuals make choices regarding whether and with whom to cooperate, and in what capacities. The size and composition of cooperative groups can be understood as a self-organized outcome of ...

Ephemeral Work Group Formation of Jenu Kuruba Honey Collectors and Late 19th Century Coloado Silver Prospectors (Kathryn Demps and Susan M. Glover Klemetti) Behaviour (2014)

Humans frequently form short-lived cooperative groups to accomplish subsistence and economic tasks. We explore the ecological and cultural factors behind ephemeral work-group formation in two disparate cultural contexts: groups foraging for wild honey in present ...

An Empirical Comparison of Knowledge and Skill in the Context of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (Kathryn Demps) Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine (2013)

Background We test whether traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) about how to make an item predicts a person’s skill at making it among the Tsimane’ (Bolivia). The rationale for this research is that the failure to ...

Social Learning Across the Life Cycle: Cultural Knowledge Acquisition for Honey Collection Among the Jenu Kuruba, India (Victoria Reyes-García, Francisco Zorondo-Rodríguez, Claude García, et al.) Evolution and Human Behavior (2012)

Accounting for age-dependent patterns of knowledge transmission is critical for understanding cultural evolution in age-structured populations. Cultural evolution theory predicts which social learning biases we expect people to use, but much less often when—during a ...

The Selective Persistence of Local Ecological Knowledge: Honey Collecting with the Jenu Kuruba in South India (K. Demps, F. Zorondo-Rodriguez, C. García, et al.) Human Ecology (2012)

The article presents a study which examines the ecological and sociological pressures for the transmission of cultural knowledge on honey collecting with the Jenu Keruba in Kodagu, South India. The study uses qualitative ethnographic and ...

Local Community Attitudes Toward Forests Outside Protected Areas in India. Impact of Legal Awareness, Trust, and Participation (Biljana Macura, Francisco Zorondo-Rodríguez, Mar Grau-Satorras, et al.) Ecology and Society (2011)

The success of long-term sustainable management of natural resources depends on local people’s support. Assessing local people’s attitudes, taking into account their needs, and respecting their opinions should become a management priority. In India, in ...

Schooling and Local Environmental Knowledge: Do They Complement or Substitute Each Other? (Victoria Reyes-García, Eric Kightley, Isabel Ruiz-Mallén, et al.) International Journal of Educational Development (2010)

Schooling and the knowledge acquired at school have been considered both a cause of loss of indigenous knowledge (because it opens pathways to the non-indigenous world and worldviews) and a potential remedy to its demise ...

A Human-Environment Systems Approach to Outdoor Recreation, Human Biological Stress, and Landscape Aesthetics (Ellie Opdahl, Kathryn Demps and Julie Heath) MILES Data Sets (2018)

Outdoor recreation, as the intersection between physical exercise and nature, provides a multitude of psychological and physiological benefits to human well-being. Though many studies have reported qualitative stress reduction from outdoor recreation, few have focused ...

Does Outdoor Recreation Decrease Stress? Investigating the Physiological Responses of Outdoor Recreation in Idaho (Ellie Opdahl, Kathryn Demps and Julie Heath) MILES Data Sets (2016)

This poster was presented at the 2016 Idaho EPSCoR Annual Meeting, October 19-21, in Couer d'Alene Idaho.

Data Associated with Characterizing Off Highway Vehicle Mobility Patterns in Southwest Idaho (Eric Frey, Kathryn Demps, Benjamin P. Pauli, et al.) MILES Data Sets (2016)

Recreation on public lands is growing and is increasingly recognized as an ecosystem service providing improved health, connection to nature, and social time while also disturbing and degrading ecosystems. Human impacts must be managed, but ...

Optimal Foraging and Ephemeral Group Formation of Jenu Kuruba Honey Collectors and Late 19th C. Colorado Silver Prospectors (Kathryn Demps and Susan Glover Klemetti) 2nd Annual Northwest Evolution, Ecology, and Human Behavior Symposium (2014)

Humans frequently form short-lived cooperative groups to accomplish subsistence and economic tasks. We explore the ecological and cultural factors behind ephemeral work-group formation in two disparate cultural contexts: groups foraging for wild honey in present ...

Optimal Foraging and Ephemeral Group Formation: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Jenu Kuruba Honey Collectors and 19th C. Silver Prospectors (Kathryn Demps) 112th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (2013)

Contrary to the logic of economic foraging, researchers find little evidence that per capita yields are the most important factor in determining size and composition of ephemeral work groups. Variation in patch size and uncertainty ...

The Ecology of Behavioral Transmission: Learning to Collect Wild Honey in South India (Kathryn Demps) Colloquium for Dartmouth Department of Anthropology, Asian and Middle-Eastern Studies Program and The Dickey Center for National Understanding (2012)

Local ecological knowledge produces positive returns to individuals via the cultural transmission of adaptive behaviors. Since social learning does not exist in a vacuum, locating behavioral transmission patterns in real-world settings informs our theory about ...

Dynamics of Social Learning: Socialization into a Honey-Collecting Tribe and the Ecology of Cultural Knowledge Transmission (Kathryn Demps) UC Davis Department of Anthropology Spring Colloquium (2012)

Honey Hunting with the Jenu Kuruba: An Exploration of the Social and Individual Pressures on the Transmission of Local Ecological Knowledge (Kathryn Demps, F. Zorondo, C. García, et al.) 23rd Annual Conference of the Human Behavior & Evolution Society (2011)

In the face of great change in some areas of traditional knowledge among the Jenu Kuruba, we find that honey collecting remains fairly stable in this small-scale south Indian society. The behavior of “honey collecting” ...

Characterizing Recreationists in the Owyhees (Denell Letourneau, Kathryn Demps, Hannah Brown, et al.) College of Social Sciences and Public Affairs Presentations (2015)

Public lands are utilized by both recreationists and wildlife. The dual use mandate (Organic Act) requires the preservation of resources while maintaining recreational opportunities. Understanding recreationists helps us by identifying the habits, views, and economic ...

Time Distribution of Faculty Workload at Boise State University (John P. Ziker, Allyanna Wintermote, David Nolin, et al.) College of Social Sciences and Public Affairs Presentations (2014)

This project’s first phase was to get a general idea of what the average work day looks like for a Boise State University faculty member; from this stage we developed activity definitions to use for ...

Development of Environmental Attitudes and Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) Use History in the Treasure Valley (Jadie King, Michelle Kinney and Kathryn Demps) Idaho Conference on Undergraduate Research

Outdoor recreation is a highly valued aspect of Idahoan life as well as a leading contributor to the decline of sensitive species on public lands. As off-highway vehicle (OHV) use increases, so does the likelihood ...