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Many ethics review bureaucracies present signed, written forms administered at a single point in time as the default, best‐practice method for obtaining and documenting consent to participate in research. The demand is emblematic of ethics review committees' insistence on form over function, their failure to understand the cultural contexts of field research, and erroneous assumptions about research methods. Ethnographers responding to an international survey argued that written consent may not protect participants, may mask unethical research, and may often be inappropriate for legal, cultural, political or historical reasons. We suggest the dominance of written consent reflects culturally specific views of paper, writing, signatures, and contracts grounded in particular historical imaginations of the authenticity of the signature and the power of writing and forms. Construed by ethics review institutions as culturally universal, the signed consent form has come to take on the qualities of a fetish. [research ethics, informed consent, signatures, forms, research ethics committees, institutional review boards] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a list of volumes that have been published through the American Anthropological Association's publication "Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association" including "Alternative Approaches to Lithic Analysis," "Powers of Observation: Alternative Views in Archeology," and "Lords of the Southeast: Social Inequality and the Native Elites of Southeastern North America."

The authors of this response article express gratitude for the comments made by Martin and colleagues on their previous paper. They argue that their review articles provide evidence supporting the idea that women were capable of hunting in the Paleolithic era. They disagree with Martin and colleagues' assertion that reproductive behavioral ecology work among modern foragers should preclude reconstructions of past gender roles. The authors also address criticisms regarding testable hypotheses, estrogen levels, the value of mothering and gathering activities, and the feasibility of a strict sexual division of labor in small forager groups. They invite Martin and colleagues to collaborate on further research to explore the reasons behind the absence of evidence for a sexual division of labor until relatively recently. [Extracted from the article]

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