Postmarital Residence Research Articles

Migration models of prehistoric postmarital residence.

It has previously been suggested that residential practices can be inferred from within- or between-group analysis of male and female skeletal morphology. Arguments have proceeded from intuitively derived hypotheses about the genetic consequences of drift and migration. In this paper, a formal basis is presented for these hypotheses using modified versions of Wright's island model and the migration matrix method. It is shown that the usual measures of standardized genetic variance or genetic kinship can be decomposed into male, female, and male/female components. The male and female components can in turn be used separately to assess the effect of different residential practices on the population genetic structure of the two sexes. Following upon these models, nonmetric cranial trait data from prehistoric sites in west-central Illinois are used to delineate the probable residential practices for this region.

Measures of Polygyny in Humans

Measures of Polygyny in Humans

Motives for Private Income Transfers

Private income transfers are becoming increasingly recognized as a key aspect of the U.S. economy. The majority of private income transfers occur inter vivos (i.e., between living persons), but very little is known about this type of transfer behavior. This paper tests alternative hypotheses concerning motivation for inter vivos transfers. Two motives are considered: altruism and exchange. Evidence presented here casts doubt on the altruistic model of transfer behavior. Observed patterns for inter vivos transfers are more consistent with exchange-related motives. This finding has important implications for the effects of public transfer programs on the distribution of economic well-being.

Learning patterns, potter interaction and ceramic style among the Luo of Kenya

One aspect of an ethno-archaeological study of the pottery system of the Luo people of Kenya is examined. It was discovered that ceramic ‘micro-styles’, distinctive combinations of decorative, formal and technological features characteristic of the different potter communities in a 3000 km2 region of western Kenya, are the product of local traditions of manufacture perpetuated by women potters recruited from outside the communities as a result of a patrilocal post-marital residence system. An analysis of the interplay of a mother-in-law/daughter-in-law learning pattern, strong pressures for post-marital resocialization, and processes of potter interaction in the generation of ceramic styles is undertaken and some implications for archaeological attempts to use ceramic patterning to uncover prehistoric social organization are discussed.

Ceramic Analysis and the Investigation of Matrilocality at the Smith Mohawk Village Site

Ceramic analysis was undertaken to identify spatial patterns of stylistic variables which might shed light on the social organization of the prehistoric Mohawk, who have been described ethnographically as both matrilocal and matrilineal. Attribute analysis of samples of decorated ceramics recovered from two longhouses at the Smith site, in Fulton County, New York, was carried out. The percentage of occurrence of stylistic attributes was calculated, and a coefficient of agreement generated between pairs of ceramic samples. Based on these data, it is concluded that the ceramics demonstrate within-longhouse homogeneity. This would be compatible with a preferred, but not necessarily prescribed, matrilocal rule of post-marital residence.

Breastfeeding decline in urban China: an exploratory study.

"Retrospective data collected in two urban neighborhoods of Tianjin, People's Republic of China, reveal a decline in the rate and duration of breastfeeding since the mid-1930's.... The evidence indicates that breastfeeding declined as women became involved in work outside the home, as they adopted a form of postmarital residence that separated them from other relatives, as income increased, and as their rural origins decreased. No evidence was found to indicate a relationship between breastfeeding and parity or sex preferences."

Strips and Patches: A Demographic Dimension in Some African Land-Holding and Political Systems

This article describes a correspondence between population pressures, political systems and modes of land tenure in societies of the lake region of east Africa as observed in the mid-twentieth century. In this area, agrarian systems organised on the basis of segmentary lineages were found mainly in areas of land shortage, whereas agrarian systems organised on the basis of territorially defined chiefdoms and communities with political hierarchy were more commonly found in areas where land was relatively abundant. The correspondence is confirmed by cases where changes in demographic pressure over time were accompanied by dramatic changes in forms of sociopolitical organisation. The distribution of the two broad types of systems can be accounted for partly in terms of decisions of farmers about postmarital residence and landholding under crowded and uncrowded conditions. Parallels may be observed outside Africa. Rural population pressures commonly increase restrictions on access to land in east African descent groups, but the development of localised lineages in conditions of rural crowding is not always a simple, one-way process.

Family Life Cycle, Work Career Patterns, and Women's Wages at Midlife

Social gerontologists generally agree that the status of the elderly in the US and in other industrial countries is quite low but their status is not uniformly high in nonindustrial societies. The status of the elderly tends to be high in agricultural societies because the elderly usually control property right; elderly status is lower in hunter-gatherer societies because resourses are usually open to all. The status of the elderly tends to be higher in societies with extended and stem families than in those with nuclear families although this relationship may be spurious due to the association of family types with economic systems. The authors test the hypothesis that the status of the elderly varies according to family type regardless of economic system. Specifically the authors test whether elderly status varies with type of economy; the presence or absence of inheritance customs; and patterns of postmarital residence especially in cases of patrilocal residence. Data on 122 cultures from the Standard Cross Cultural Sample of Murdock and White 1969 and the Human Relations Files are examined for prestige power and privilege for elderly males and females. Elderly status is significantly lower in exploitative than in agricultural economics. Elderly status also varies with family structure. For men and women status is highest in small extended families and lowest in large extended families. The elderly have higher status in societies that have inheritance customs. Their status is lowest in neolocal societies highest in patrilocal societies and intermediate in other unilocal societies. The effects of inheritance customs and small extended families are negligible. This study suggests that the importance of family structure is overated as a source of elderly status.

THE MEASUREMENT AND MEANING OF STYLISTIC DIVERSITY

For archaeologists of many persuasions, style is a hard-working oracle. Style is asked whether prehistoric post-marital residence rules were patrilocal or matrilocal, whether political institutions were religious or imperial in nature, whether populations were seasonally aggregated or dis persed, and whether production was domestically or industrially organized. Above all, cultural historians continue to use style as an ultimate sensor of space-time relations. Whenever so much is asked of a single oracle (even of the great ancient ones at Delphi and Pachacamac), answers are bound to be elliptic. It is small wonder that the very definition of style remains elusive and continues to exasperate many archaeologists (Sackett, 1977; Wobst, 1977). Style is a perfect black box: its works are omnipresent; its internal workings remain problematic.

Forms of Huron Kinship and Marriage

The topic of Huron marriage and kinship is a hornet's nest for the anthropologist. Since the first reports registered by the Recollet and Jesuit missionaries, authors have cited four different types of filiation-descent groups1 and no less than ten different forms of post-marital residence.2 In 1624 Pere LeCaron wrote: most Huron have several wives and change whenever it pleases them. The Jesuit Brebeuf (1957:25) reported that eleven years later in 1635 one of the major advantages in proselytizing the faith among the Huron was that were already monogamous with a strong incest taboo: they marry into neither their direct nor collateral lines. The exogamy prohibition has been variously applied to the ohwachia (matrilocal extended family) (Tooker 1964), the matrisib or clan (Richards 1957), or the entire tribe (Smith 1970). It is no wonder that anthropologists hesitate to raise the issue for fear of being stung. In this article we attempt to derive a certain order for the elements and relations of precolonial kin groups and marriage customs among the Huron tribes of southern Ontario. We argue that in terms of formal kinship analysis, the Huron system belongs to what Levi-Strauss (1969) has described as complex structures and point to the influence of the ensemble of social relations on the subsequent changes in the rules of filiation and descent. We also present the case for two simultaneous forms of marriage corresponding to two basic residence patterns. Although the data on Huron kinship are no more imperfectly organized than that for any other prehistoric society, there is a particular problem associated with the confluence of the claim for a matrilineal/matrilocal structure?a formal criterion?and the question of sexual relations of dominance/subordination, which is a distinctly sociological issue. The result is a confusing intermingling of theoretical levels which often leads to the following tautological predicament. According to Trigger (1976:136):

Household Structure in Fourteenth-Century Macedonia

Using data obtained from a fourteenth-century Serbian charter granting six villages to the monastery of Chilandar Athos the author examines the kinship structure of 127 households from that part of medieval Serbia now known as Yugoslav Macedonia. Household size and kinship structure are analyzed as a function of the length of the domestic cycle. The effects on this cycle length of post-marital residence net replacement rate sex ratio age at marriage and availability of land for expansion are investigated (ANNOTATION)

Aboriginal Indian Residence Patterns Preserved in Censuses and Allotments

Early reservation annuity censuses and allotment ledgers, analyzed in concert, allow identification of sociologically significant subdivisions of Native American tribes. Using this method, Southern Cheyenne manhao or "bands" can be located on the allotment map of 1892 as discrete clusters of individuals known by name, age, and sex. Measurement of linear distances among individual allotments of family members enables us to quantify jural rules of postmarital residence and confirms in a test case that the descendents of the bands at the Sand Creek Massacre in fact resided matrilocally.

African bridewealth and women's status

Three shortcomings of previous studies of African bridewealth and its relation to the status of African women are: they are based on a limited number of societies, they usually consider bridewealth mainly in terms of the interests of the male members of African societies, and they are essentially etic models that cannot adequately account for many important features of bridewealth payment. These inadequacies have led to conflicting results and ungeneralizable conclusions. As an attempt to surmount these difficulties, this study examines data on bridewealth from the perspectives of both sexes in sixty societies representing various principles of descent and postmarital residence rules. The study finds little evidence to support previous conclusions about the functions of bridewealth and women's status in Africa. It suggests that the one function of bridewealth common to African societies is the legitimation of marriage, a function that enhances rather than diminishes the status of women in the African context.

Military Organization as a Response to Residence and Size of Population: A Cross-Cultural Study

This paper presents the results of a cross-cultural test; the test supports a theory of cultural adaptation relating post marital residence and popu lation size to type of military organization. The theory predicts that societies with uxorilocal/matrilocal residence or which are large are more likely to have professional military organizations than are those with virilocal/patrilocal residence and those which are small.

Science in Archaeology: The Saints Go Marching In

AbstractThe New Archaeology has been said to involve a new view of culture and a heightened appreciation of the way to do science. By way of examining these claims, a review is made of three well known studies in which archaeologists popularly assigned to that movement attempt to relate the distributions of archaeological materials to patterns of post-marital residence. One of the studies is found to be possibly successful, the others probably unsuccessful, and the conclusion is that no such relationship is demonstrated. Although the conceptual framework of the studies is impressive, at least two of them are found to suffer from an insufficiency of rigor in testing their hypotheses. It is suggested that the conceptual framework is not peculiar to the New Archaeology, and that the shortcomings in testing relate to a misapprehension of scientific method.

Kinship Structure, Post-Marital Residence and Sex-Role Equality in China

Abstract The aim of this paper is to articulate the significance of Chinese kinship structure and post-marital rule of residence in shaping the direction of family change, and the attainment of egalitarianism between the sexes. By drawing upon the works of anthropologists on factors associated with changes in rules of post-marital residence and the more theoretical work of Hsu on Chinese and Western kinship structure and content, the author wishes to point out the general direction in which family change may take place in China, and to cast doubt on the inevitability of nuclearization. Field notes gathered during the author's unguided three-week visit to southeastern China (Kwangtung and Fukien provinces) in the fall of 1976 during the time of Mao's death are presented extensively to lend further support to her argument that structural constraints inherent in the Chinese kinship system countervail the official goals of promoting sexual equality in China.

An Archaeological Perspective on Shoshonean Bands

The prehistoric archaeology of the Reese River Valley in the central Great Basin strongly indicates that a Shoshonean-like settlement pattern has existed for approximately 4500 years in this vicinity. A comparison of the prehistoric demography and ecology with similar patterns among modem primitive groups suggests that the post-marital residence pattern of the prehistoric Shoshoneans was most probably bilateral and rather flexible, as originally suggested by Julian Steward. If this interpretation is correct, then it contradicts Elman Service's 1962 hypothesis of patrilocal bands among the preconlact Shoshoneans. No attempt is made to confront the ideological models of the prehistoric Shoshoneans, for modern scientific archaeology can presently consider only etic phenomena. If archeologists and ethnologists are to overcome the limitations of their observational fields and contribute to the general field of anthropology, they must develop methods which will allow explanatory propositions regarding the operation of cultural systems to be tested by both archeological and ethnographic data. [L. R. Binford 1968a:269]

Aspects of Kinship Change in a Modernizing Turkish Town

This paper examines aspects of kinship change in a Turkish town which has recently undergone a series of dramatic changes including the input of a modern sugar refinery and increased social and economic integration with the more urban and advanced cities of Turkey. A more dynamic and relevant approach to the study of kinship change is proposed which deals with people's goals, the ways these goals change through time, and the ways individuals interact with their kin to attain these goals.This study finds that within the context of a more modern socioeconomic structure basic kinship goals such as postmarital residence, ideal household composition, and spouse selection have changed and that participant kinship is becoming progressively confined to the nuclear family. These changes have had a positive consequence for the ethnic integration of the community.

Structural Statistics and Structural Mechanics: The Analysis of Compadrazgo

In an exploration of the structural implications of the selection of compadres in a Middle American town, two formal models are constructed from statistical data obtained from a random sample of informants. These models, derived from set theory and information theory, respectively, provide alternative frameworks for making explicit inferences about the underlying mechanical properties of the selection system. It is noted that there is a significant relationship between compadrazgo and kinship obligations, specifically as reflected in postmarital residence patterns. In formalizing this relationship beyond the level of classic statistical analysis, it is suggested that structural statistics and structural mechanics may be productively related in an operational fashion by specifying the formal properties and theoretical implications of an empirical order of phenomena.

Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices in a Mesolithic Population from Wadi Haifa, Sudan

AbstractAssuming an individual's treatment at death is a reflection of the position occupied in a status system in life, and that differences between individual interments reflect the type of status system participated in (e.g., egalitarian versus ranked), the outlines of extinct status systems should be ascertainable. This paper will present the results of such an attempt using data collected from the mesolithic occupation and burial site of Wadi Haifa, northern Sudan. These data include age, sex, pathology, treatment of the body, and mode of interment. The evidence argues for an egalitarian status system with differences in disposal associated with differences in age, sex, and personal achievement. Differences in mortality rates are examined in light of constraints placed on hunting and gathering societies. There is also evidence of post-marital residence favoring the husband's agnates.