Kinship

In today's class we discussed the topic of Kinship in archaeology. This is an important topic for archaeologists to look at because family ties and connections with others before death can explain a lot in regards to what, when, where, why, and how they were buried. Today we looked at many different descent lines we broke descent lines down into 2 categories; one descent groups and and descent residence rules. 

In descent groups you have Unilineal which breaks down into two groups: Patrilineal Descent: people automatically have lifetime membership in fathers group and Matrilineal Descent: people automatically have lifetime membership in mothers group. It is found that matrilineal decent groups are used more often because you can always tell who the mother is when a child is being born. However, a child may be perceived to have one father but it could in fact be another man's child. It has been proven to be more effective to trace descent through the mothers line due to the fact that fathers are sometimes uncertain. This insures that the line of descent is accurately depicted. 

The descent residence rules of unilocal post-marriage residence are as follows: Patrilocality which is when married couples (and their children) live in the husband’s community. The second is Matrilocality where married couples (and their children) live in the wife’s community.

When asked in class how does an archaeologist actually identify kinship, I had drawn a blank. I thought to myself at first that's pretty easy and then I thought about it and I couldn't think of many good identifiers of kinship. However, after we started to talk more about I realized that  the following are key: 

• age
• isotopes 
• markers 
• plots
• symbols 
• grave good 
• aDNA 
• inheritable traits or disorders that pass through different lines

I think that kinship is a very interesting concept that should defiantly be studied when looking at the graves of our ancestors particularly of different groups like the Natives in Thailand, or the Neolithic. It is an important part of understanding more about their culture and lifestyle. I think that figuring out whether individuals have ascribed or achieved status in birth is another important concept that goes along well with kinship. If a baby was buried and had only lived on earth for a couple days but had plenty of grave goods then it shows that this baby was ascribed into a family of importance, maybe a chief's son or daughter. A baby in the same situation that had achieved status probably would have had a very small burial with no grave goods because they have not worked their way up into achieving respect like an adult would have. All these concepts were discussed in today's class and I found them very interesting and important in regards to better understanding the archaeology of death.  

References:

Parker Pearson, M. (1999) The Archaeology of Death and Burial. Sutton: Stroud. Chapter 5: Kinship 

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