Abstract
ABSTRACTContrary to common belief, there are reliable reports of Dravidian‐type kinship systems with prescriptive terms, Dravidian crossness and cross‐cousin marriage in Papuan‐speaking societies in Melanesia. This paper compares four Dravidian systems from South Bougainville in the Solomon Islands. The Proto‐South Bougainville kinship system was Dravidian‐Kariera in type. It dates, uncertainly, to sometime before the Austronesian expansion into Melanesia around 1500 BC and sometime near or after the settlement of East Papua 30,000 to 40,000 years ago. Dravidian kinship systems may have been common in East Papua surviving in Bougainville because of the island's relative size and isolation.
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