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The Reconstruction of Kinship from Archaeological Data: The Concepts, the Methods, and the Feasibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

William L. Allen  and
James B. Richardson III
William L. Allen
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara
James B. Richardson III
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh
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Abstract

Archaeologists have recently attempted to reconstruct the residence and descent systems of particular prehistoric communities. Based on a study of residence and descent theory and pertinent examples from the ethnographic literature, we conclude that unless extremely detailed historical data exists, the analysis of kinship is best left to the ethnographer. The paper was conceived of as an attempt by archaeologically oriented anthropologists to resolve some of the difficulties encountered by us in our review of the archaeological literature on kinship reconstruction. We have, therefore, limited the scope of this paper accordingly; that is, it has been written principally with the problems of the archaeologist not the ethnographer in mind. An abbreviated version of this paper was presented at the 64th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , January 1971 , pp. 41 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1971

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