Kin-Mode Contradictions, Crises, and Transformations in the Archaic Lower Mississippi Valley

Abstract

A Marxist perspective considers contradictions within modes of production that ultimately lead to crises and transformations to other modes, providing a framework for interpreting political economic change in human societies. This chapter describes how kinship and marriage structure social relations of production and contradictions in kin-modes that may lead to social transformations. An archaeological framework for making inferences on kinship and marriage is applied to the Archaic periods of the Lower Mississippi Valley to explain the enigmatic development of early mound-building foraging societies and their dissolution in the Tchefuncte period. The Archaic periods reflect competitive “Crow/Omaha” kinship and marriage—explaining mound building and widespread craft production and exchange—that experienced the disproportionate demographic growth among descent groups hypothesized to cause crises in social reproduction. This was followed by a social transformation in the Tchefuncte period to bilateral descent networks with a less competitive “complex” marriage system.