Noa Lavi

University College London, Anthropology, Honorary Research Fellow

University of Haifa, Anthropology, Alumna

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email: [email protected]
I study the Nayaka hunting and gathering people in India, focusing on people's experience and social relationships in light of development intervention, assimilation pressure and school education.

My research interests include:
- Hunter-gatherers everyday experience and social relationships under a changing social and physical environment
- Hunter-gatherers children and childhood
- Hunter-gatherers social learning
- Human-animal relations
- Nayaka forest stories and tales
- Politics of indigeneity
- Lived experience of development projects
- Politics of aid, adivasis and scheduled tribes in India

In addition to my own research, I am also involved in other research projects:
- The Forager Children Interdisciplinary Studies Group, founded in 2016 by Sheina Lew-Levy, Noa Lavi, Rachel Reckin, and Kate Ellis-Davies at the University of Cambridge. This research group is interested in the pasts, presents, and futures of hunter-gatherer children and childhood, with a particular focus on learning.
- Hunter-gatherers Ethnoarchaeology. A multi-disciplinary research of archaeological site formation processes associated with foragers in tropical forests. This project involve ethnographic research (Noa Lavi) and geo-ethnoarchaeology (David Friesem, University of Cambridge).

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Books by Noa Lavi

Towards a Broader View of Hunter-Gatherer Sharing

by Noa Lavi and David Friesem

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Papers by Noa Lavi

Mobility, autonomy and learning: could the transition from egalitarian to non-egalitarian social structures start with children?

Nearest neighbour travel time against population density. 2.1. BaYaka playgroups tend to consist ... more Nearest neighbour travel time against population density. 2.1. BaYaka playgroups tend to consist of a broad range of ages and genders. 2.2. Flowchart of potential relationships in egalitarian or non-egalitarian social structures. 2.3. Flowchart of potential relationships in egalitarian or non-egalitarian social structures. 3.1. Illustrative example of the possible effect of mixed-sibling co-residence on the relatedness of groups. 3.2. Number of camps in which the average household is permitted to live. 5.1. Composition and kinship relationships of five hunting crews in Wales. 6.1. A Hadza man whittling a bow. 6.2. A map of the distribution of hand spears and spearthrowers throughout Australia. 6.3. A map of the recent historic distribution of blowdart use throughout the Old World. 6.4. A map of the recent historic distribution of blowdart use throughout the Americas. 7.1. Delayed return as a composite category. 8.1. A sketch of an Elk secret society dancer among the Ogalala Sioux on the American Plains. 8.2. Bone flutes used to represent the voices of spirits in Californian secret society rituals. 8.3. The interior of an Egbo ritual house of the Ekoi tribe in Nigeria. 8.4. The interior of an Egbo ritual house at Akangba, Nigeria. 8.5. The 'Sorcerer' from Les Trois Frères Cave in France. 8.6. Small dolmen containing the skull of a high-ranking member of a secret society on Vanuatu. 8.7. One of the skull cups recovered from the Solutrean deposits in Le Placard. 9.1. Net Primary Productivity and Effective Temperature conditions for extant fisher-hunter-gatherers. 138-9 9.2. Spatio-temporal distributions of NPP and ET in Upper Palaeolithic Europe. 140-1 9.3. Number of days per year with (growing) temperatures above 0°C, 5°C and 10°C. 142-3 9.4. Reconstructed population densities. 9.5.

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Hunter-gatherer children at school: A view from the Global South

Universal formal education is a major global development goal. Yet, hunter-gatherer communities h... more Universal formal education is a major global development goal. Yet, hunter-gatherer communities have extremely low participation rates in formal schooling, even in comparison with other marginalized groups. Here, we review the existing literature to identify common challenges faced by hunter-gatherer children in formal education systems in the Global South. We find that hunter-gatherer children are often granted extensive personal autonomy, which is at odds with the authoritarian culture of school. Hunter-gatherer children face economic, infrastructural, social, cultural, and structural barriers which negatively affect their school participation. While schools are a risk to the transmission of hunter-gatherer values, languages, and traditional knowledge, they are also viewed by hunter-gatherer communities as a source of economic and cultural empowerment. These findings highlight the need for hunter-gatherer communities to decide for themselves the purpose school serves, and whether ...

Hunter-gatherer children in the past: an archaeological review

Theoretical engagement and methodological innovations geared towards identifying the presence and... more Theoretical engagement and methodological innovations geared towards identifying the presence and activities of children in archaeological contexts has increased in pace over the last decade. This paper presents a systematic review of the literature pertaining to the archaeology of hunter-gatherer children. The review summarises methods and findings from 72 archaeological publications in a number of research areas that show material culture relating to childhood, including children’s playthings and tools, learning to flintknap, and their involvement in the making of marks, art and footprints. By drawing on diverse evidence from all inhabited continents, we explore the implications of these data for our understanding of the cultural variability and patterning of hunter-gatherer children in the deep past. The paper closes by discussing potential improvements to archaeological and anthropological methodologies which would progress our understanding of children as active and engaged mem...

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How do hunter-gatherer children learn to make material culture? A meta-ethnographic review

Towards a Broader View of Hunter-Gatherer Sharing

This book was funded by the EU 7th Framework Programme (7FP), TropicMicroArch 623293 Project (htt... more

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At Home Under Development: A Housing Project for the Hunter-gatherers Nayaka of the Nilgiris

The Eastern anthropologist, 2014

This paper examines house-building development projects for the Nayaka, forest dwelling hunter-ga... more This paper examines house-building development projects for the Nayaka, forest dwelling hunter-gatherers in South India. By taking a longterm perspective on Nayaka houses, the traditional ones built by themselves, and the modem ones they receive through contemporary development projects, we look at questions of social change and continuity in an era of modernization, globalization and development. Houses provide a unique anthropological site as they reflect their builders&#39; ideas, values and norms and they are also a prime agent of socialization. While in the 1970s Nayaka lived in huts that they built for themselves according to their own cultural ideas, today most of them own houses designed for them by non-Nayaka development agents, according to the latter&#39;s notions of dwellings. Looking at how new houses are designed and built reveals much about the relations between the developers and ,the developed. Looking at the new externally built houses and at the ways in which Nayaka perceive, relate and actually dwell in them reflects a great deal of cultural resilience even under intensive pressure to change.

“We Only Teach Them How to Be Together”: Parenting, Child Development, and Engagement with Formal Education Among the Nayaka in South India

Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 2021

Socioecology shapes child and adolescent time allocation in twelve hunter-gatherer and mixed-subsistence forager societies

A key issue distinguishing prominent evolutionary models of human life history is whether prolong... more A key issue distinguishing prominent evolutionary models of human life history is whether prolonged childhood evolved to facilitate learning in a skill- and strength-intensive foraging niche requiring high levels of cooperation. Considering the diversity of environments humans inhabit, children’s activities should also reflect local social and ecological opportunities and constraints. To better understand our species’ developmental plasticity, the present paper compiled a time allocation dataset for children and adolescents from twelve hunter-gatherer and mixed-subsistence forager societies (n=690; 3-18 years; 52% girls). We investigated how environmental factors, local ecological risk, and men and women’s relative energetic contributions were associated with cross-cultural variation in child and adolescent time allocation to childcare, food production, domestic work, and play. Annual precipitation, annual mean temperature, and net primary productivity were not strongly associated w...

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Site Formation Processes and Hunter-Gatherers Use of Space in a Tropical Environment: A Geo-Ethnoarchaeological Approach from South India

PLOS ONE, 2016

Hunter-gatherer societies have distinct social perceptions and practices which are expressed in u... more Hunter-gatherer societies have distinct social perceptions and practices which are expressed in unique use of space and material deposition patterns. However, the identification of archaeological evidence associated with hunter-gatherer activity is often challenging, especially in tropical environments such as rainforests. We present an integrated study combining ethnoarchaeology and geoarchaeology in order to study archaeological site formation processes related to hunter-gatherers' ways of living in tropical forests. Ethnographic data was collected from an habitation site of contemporary hunter-gatherers in the forests of South India, aimed at studying how everyday activities and way of living dictate patterns of material deposition. Ethnoarchaeological excavations of abandoned open-air sites and a rock-shelter of the same group located deep in the forests, involved field observations and sampling of sediments from the abandoned sites and the contemporary site. Laboratory analyses included geochemical analysis (i.e., FTIR, ICP-AES), phytolith concentration analysis and soil micromorphology. The results present a dynamic spatial deposition pattern of macroscopic, microscopic and chemical materials, which stem from the distinctive ways of living and use of space by hunter-gatherers. This study shows that postdepositional processes in tropical forests result in poor preservation of archaeological materials due to acidic conditions and intensive biological activity within the sediments. Yet, the multiple laboratory-based analyses were able to trace evidence for activity surfaces and their maintenance practices as well as localized concentrations of activity remains such as the use of plants, metals, hearths and construction materials.

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Foragers, tropical forests and the formation of archaeological evidences: An ethnoarchaeological view from South India

Quaternary International, 2017

Foraging societies present unique ways of living and sociality which are manifested by distinctiv... more Foraging societies present unique ways of living and sociality which are manifested by distinctive practices and use of space. From an archaeological point of view, understanding forager sociality and studying their practices and the resulting material deposition patterns is crucial to reconstruct archaeological site formation processes. When studying archaeological sites in tropical environments, such as rainforests, one must take into account and study the role of the tropics in the formation of the archaeological record. Human adaptation to tropical environment influences people's practices, use of space and materiality. In addition, the environmental setting plays a significant role in postdepositional processes which may alter, preserve or disrupt archaeological materials. This study involves a long-term ethnographic research among a contemporary forager group in South India, which allowed us to associate the social aspects of forager ways of living-such as mobility, immediacy and adaptation to the tropical forest-with patterns of use of space and material deposition. Excavations of an abandoned open-air site and a rock-shelter of the same group included field observations and sediment sampling, followed by laboratory analyses which enabled the investigation of post-depositional processes on both the visible and invisible (microscopic and sub-microscopic) scales. Overall, although forager ways of living and the environmental conditions in tropical forests challenge the formation of well-preserved archaeological evidence, an integrated approach examining the different scales of the archaeological record can successfully reconstruct the formation processes of archaeological sites in tropical forests and associate the archaeological evidence with social aspects of forager ways of living.

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Hunter-gatherer sharing

Hunter Gatherer Research, 2019

Where innovations flourish: an ethnographic and archaeological overview of hunter–gatherer learning contexts

Evolutionary Human Sciences

How Do Hunter-Gatherer Children Learn Social and Gender Norms? A Meta-Ethnographic Review

Cross-Cultural Research

Forager societies tend to value egalitarianism, cooperative autonomy, and sharing. Furthermore, f... more Forager societies tend to value egalitarianism, cooperative autonomy, and sharing. Furthermore, foragers exhibit a strong gendered division of labor. However, few studies have employed a cross-cultural approach to understand how forager children learn social and gender norms. To address this gap, we perform a meta-ethnography, which allows for the systematic extraction, synthesis, and comparison of quantitative and qualitative publications. In all, 77 publications met our inclusion criteria. These suggest that sharing is actively taught in infancy. In early childhood, children transition to the playgroup, signifying their increased autonomy. Cooperative behaviors are learned through play. At the end of middle childhood, children self-segregate into same-sex groups and begin to perform gender-specific tasks. We find evidence that foragers actively teach children social norms, and that, with sedentarization, teaching, through direct instruction and task assignment, replaces imitation ...

How Do Hunter-Gatherer Children Learn Subsistence Skills? : A Meta-Ethnographic Review

Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.), 2017

Hunting and gathering is, evolutionarily, the defining subsistence strategy of our species. Study... more Hunting and gathering is, evolutionarily, the defining subsistence strategy of our species. Studying how children learn foraging skills can, therefore, provide us with key data to test theories about the evolution of human life history, cognition, and social behavior. Modern foragers, with their vast cultural and environmental diversity, have mostly been studied individually. However, cross-cultural studies allow us to extrapolate forager-wide trends in how, when, and from whom hunter-gatherer children learn their subsistence skills. We perform a meta-ethnography, which allows us to systematically extract, summarize, and compare both quantitative and qualitative literature. We found 58 publications focusing on learning subsistence skills. Learning begins early in infancy, when parents take children on foraging expeditions and give them toy versions of tools. In early and middle childhood, children transition into the multi-age playgroup, where they learn skills through play, observa...

The formation of fire residues associated with hunter-gatherers in humid tropical environments: A geo-ethnoarchaeological perspective

Quaternary Science Reviews

How Do Hunter-Gatherer Children Learn Subsistence Skills? : A Meta-Ethnographic Review

Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.), 2017

At Home Under Development: A Housing Project for the Hunter-Gatherers Nayaka of the Nilgiris

This paper examines house-building development projects for the Nayaka, forest dwelling hunter-ga... more This paper examines house-building development projects for the Nayaka, forest dwelling hunter-gatherers in South India. By taking a longterm perspective on Nayaka houses, the traditional ones built by themselves, and the modem ones they receive through contemporary development projects, we look at questions of social change and continuity in an era of modernization, globalization and development. Houses provide a unique anthropological site as they reflect their builders' ideas, values and norms and they are also a prime agent of socialization. While in the 1970s Nayaka lived in huts that they built for themselves according to their own cultural ideas, today most of them own houses designed for them by non-Nayaka development agents, according to the latter's notions of dwellings. Looking at how new houses are designed and built reveals much about the relations between the developers and ,the developed. Looking at the new externally built houses and at the ways in which Nayaka perceive, relate and actually dwell in them reflects a great deal of cultural resilience even under intensive pressure to change.

Download

How Do Hunter- Gatherer Children Learn Social and Gender Norms? A Meta- Ethnographic Review

Download

A Meta-Ethnographic Review How Do Hunter-Gatherer Children Learn Subsistence Skills

Download

Towards a Broader View of Hunter-Gatherer Sharing

by Noa Lavi and David Friesem

Download

Mobility, autonomy and learning: could the transition from egalitarian to non-egalitarian social structures start with children?

Download

Hunter-gatherer children at school: A view from the Global South

Hunter-gatherer children in the past: an archaeological review

Download

How do hunter-gatherer children learn to make material culture? A meta-ethnographic review

Towards a Broader View of Hunter-Gatherer Sharing

This book was funded by the EU 7th Framework Programme (7FP), TropicMicroArch 623293 Project (htt... more

Download

At Home Under Development: A Housing Project for the Hunter-gatherers Nayaka of the Nilgiris

The Eastern anthropologist, 2014

“We Only Teach Them How to Be Together”: Parenting, Child Development, and Engagement with Formal Education Among the Nayaka in South India

Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 2021

Socioecology shapes child and adolescent time allocation in twelve hunter-gatherer and mixed-subsistence forager societies

Download

Site Formation Processes and Hunter-Gatherers Use of Space in a Tropical Environment: A Geo-Ethnoarchaeological Approach from South India

PLOS ONE, 2016

Download

Foragers, tropical forests and the formation of archaeological evidences: An ethnoarchaeological view from South India

Quaternary International, 2017

Download

Hunter-gatherer sharing

Hunter Gatherer Research, 2019

Where innovations flourish: an ethnographic and archaeological overview of hunter–gatherer learning contexts

Evolutionary Human Sciences

How Do Hunter-Gatherer Children Learn Social and Gender Norms? A Meta-Ethnographic Review

Cross-Cultural Research

How Do Hunter-Gatherer Children Learn Subsistence Skills? : A Meta-Ethnographic Review

Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.), 2017

The formation of fire residues associated with hunter-gatherers in humid tropical environments: A geo-ethnoarchaeological perspective

Quaternary Science Reviews

How Do Hunter-Gatherer Children Learn Subsistence Skills? : A Meta-Ethnographic Review

Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.), 2017

At Home Under Development: A Housing Project for the Hunter-Gatherers Nayaka of the Nilgiris

This paper examines house-building development projects for the Nayaka, forest dwelling hunter-ga... more This paper examines house-building development projects for the Nayaka, forest dwelling hunter-gatherers in South India. By taking a longterm perspective on Nayaka houses, the traditional ones built by themselves, and the modem ones they receive through contemporary development projects, we look at questions of social change and continuity in an era of modernization, globalization and development. Houses provide a unique anthropological site as they reflect their builders' ideas, values and norms and they are also a prime agent of socialization. While in the 1970s Nayaka lived in huts that they built for themselves according to their own cultural ideas, today most of them own houses designed for them by non-Nayaka development agents, according to the latter's notions of dwellings. Looking at how new houses are designed and built reveals much about the relations between the developers and ,the developed. Looking at the new externally built houses and at the ways in which Nayaka perceive, relate and actually dwell in them reflects a great deal of cultural resilience even under intensive pressure to change.

Download

How Do Hunter- Gatherer Children Learn Social and Gender Norms? A Meta- Ethnographic Review

Download

A Meta-Ethnographic Review How Do Hunter-Gatherer Children Learn Subsistence Skills

Download

Mobility, Autonomy and Learning: Could the Transition from Egalitarian to Non-Egalitarian Social Structures Start with Children?

by Rachel Reckin and Noa Lavi

Social Inequality Before Farming?: Multidisciplinary approaches to the study of social organization in prehistoric and ethnographic hunter-gatherer-fisher societies, 2020

This chapter focuses on two changes that may have had important ramifications for the transition ... more This chapter focuses on two changes that may have had important ramifications for the transition from egalitarianism to non-egalitarianism among hunter-gatherers. To discuss this transition, we synthesize existing cross-cultural data from small-scale societies to consider how the processes of children’s learning differ between more mobile and more settled peoples. First, researchers suggest that more child-appropriate labour among settled communities, including tasks like cleaning, maintenance of possessions, food processing, and tending to animals or gardens leads to settled children being assigned more chores than their mobile peers (Bock 2002; Morelli 1997; Munroe et al. 1983). In particular, girls may experience earlier and more intensive chore assignment, placing them in the home and calcifying gender roles overall (Whiting and Whiting 1975). These cross-cultural observations suggest that when mobility decreases, gender inequality develops thanks partially to increasingly gendered regimes of chore assignment for children. Second, research suggests that the transition from multi-age and multi-gender playgroups in small, mobile societies to same-age, same-gender playgroups in more settled societies provides children with more opportunities to play competitive games (e.g. Draper 1976). We argue that this trend toward increased competitive play among children with larger peer groups fosters a competitive ethos that follows children into adulthood. In the end, we argue that changes in mobility, economy and work also change children’s learning contexts, contributing to a decreased cultural emphasis on personal autonomy, and an increased emphasis on gender inequality and competition.

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How do hunter-gatherer children learn to share? A meta-ethnographic review (Ellis-Davies, K., Lew-Levy, S., Lavi, N., Reckin, R., Cristobal-Azkarate, J.)

Sharing, often considered a foundational schema for hunter-gatherers, acts as a leveling mechanis... more Sharing, often considered a foundational schema for hunter-gatherers, acts as a leveling mechanism, systematically disengaging people from property and therefore from the potential for property to create dependency. While most studies on sharing tend to focus on the distribution of large game meat, the demand to share includes a great variety of food items and objects, as well as the sharing of time, actions, spaces and experiences. Though many studies have explored the importance of sharing to hunter-gatherers, few have examined how sharing beliefs and behaviours are transmitted across generations. Furthermore, to our knowledge, no studies have employed a cross-cultural approach to understand how, when, and from whom hunter-gatherer children learn to share. To address this gap, we perform a meta-ethnography, which allows us to compare quantitative and qualitative publications on this topic. Seven publications met our inclusion criteria, and these focused on Hadza, Aka, San, Nayaka and Batek children. Our results indicate that sharing is actively taught, starting from infancy. Mothers play a central role in teaching sharing behaviours in early life. In early and middle childhood, other children play a prominent role in teaching sharing behaviours, through instruction, commands, participation, and norm enforcement. Through participation in the daily activity of food distribution, sharing knowledge is also imparted. These results contribute to the debate regarding whether teaching occurs in the forager context, by highlighting that teaching sharing behaviours occurs throughout childhood. Furthermore, the fact that forager children transmit sharing behaviours to others highlights that they are not passive, but instead contribute to constructing cultural norms and meaning. Further research should investigate how children's participation in teaching sharing behaviours enables them to internalize these behaviours, making them more competent social agents.

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At home in a Changing World: Contemporary life of the Nayaka in South India

In this study I explore the contemporary changes in the life of a small group of Nayaka, living i... more In this study I explore the contemporary changes in the life of a small group of Nayaka, living in the Nilgiri district, Tamil Nadu. In the past few decades various groups in the region, including the Nayaka, became the focus of governmental and non-governmental development programs, working to assimilate them in the surrounding dominant society. Here I focus on housing projects conducted by the Government and NGOs since the late 1990s, as a case study for the Nayaka's relationship with various external institutions involved in their life and the ways they relate, perceive, interpret and act in their contemporary changing world. The governmental and NGO's housing projects are aimed to support development efforts for the "backward forest people" through changes in their living conditions and environment, which will assumingly produce a significant social change. However, by looking at the way Nayaka live, dwell and act in their new brick-and-mortar villages, I argue that the Nayaka manage to modify this foreign environment and reinterpret it as a continuum of their traditional villages. Since they perceive their newly built environment differently than the way its external builders perceive it, the housing projects do not yield the desired social changes. Instead, the Nayaka's perception allows them to preserve and maintain to a large extant their relational epistemology (Bird-David, 1999) and act in-the-world through social relations and emphasis on living-together in full visibility and mobility.

"Indigenous Knowledge" vs. "New Knowledge" among the Nayaka forest dwellers in South India

Accommodating ontologies: Modernist and relational reconfigurations in housing projects for forest people in South India (Co-authored with Nurit Bird-David)

In this article we explore conflicting ontologies in house-building development projects for fore... more In this article we explore conflicting ontologies in house-building development projects for forest people in South India, with special focus on a community of Nayaka whom we studied since the late 1970s when they were still living in their traditional bamboo-and-grass homes. Government and NGOs have been providing them since the late 1990s with brick-and-mortar family houses, partly out of their own initiative moved by concern to "develop" the "backward forest people" and partly in response to the Nayaka own requests. We look at the ontological departure points of the outside house-providers and the indigenous house recipients and dwellers, and at key moments in the complex relationship between them. We argue that the traditional homes expressed and supported a relational ontology, and now the housing programs act as a conjunction point where diverse ontologies clash. We propose that this deluge of ontologies contributes both to the backward image of Adivasi people, and to ambivalent results of the housing projects which in turn perpetuates the ontological dissonance.

Private property, wages and cows? What can archaeologists still learn from today's hunter-gatherers?

Why is it so hard to conserve Indigenous/Forest Knowledge? A case study of Nayaka forest dweller hunter-gatherers in South India

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