Archaeology of Kinship and the Family

A Western Zhou period cemetery near Hengshui zhen 横水鎮 in Jiang 降 county, southwest Shanxi, was discovered in 2004. A comprehensive report about the excavations of the whole site has not yet been published, but some observations can be made based on preliminary reports about the tombs of Pengbo Cheng 倗伯爯 and his spouse Bi Ji 畢姬. Inscriptions discovered elsewhere reveal that Peng 倗 was a lineage of the Kui 媿/Gui 鬼 surname. Some received texts associate Kui/Gui-surnamed lineages with the Di 狄/翟 group of northern non-Zhou peoples. According to the Chinese historiographical tradition, the Di remained autonomous from the Huaxia 華夏 cultural and political community, which was dominated during the Western Zhou period by polities ruled by lineages of the Ji 姬 and Jiang 姜 surnames. The new discovery shows that a small non-Zhou polity, not referred to in transmitted literature, existed quite close to the eastern residence of the Zhou kings at Chengzhou 成周 and just to the south of Jin 晉, one of the major Zhou colonies ruled by a lineage of Ji surname. Moreover, rulers of Peng had marital relations with Bi 畢, another distinguished Ji-surnamed lineage closely related to the Zhou royal house. Thus, the case of Peng can be very instructive for understanding geopolitical and cultural relations in China during the Western Zhou period. In the following, I briefly introduce the tombs of the Peng ruling couple and the inscriptions on their bronzes, and then proceed to discuss the following four issues:
• the date of tombs M1 and M2 of the Peng cemetery;
• the relationship of Peng with non-Zhou peoples, as it can be observed based on the analysis of material remains and onomastic evidence;
• the integration of the Peng lineage into the Zhou political and social network;
• the role played by Yigong 益公, mentioned in the inscription on the Pengbo Cheng gui 倗伯爯簋 tureen, in the acquisition of allies among non-Zhou peoples.
In the conclusion, I use the case of Peng to discuss some general issues in the relationships between Zhou and non-Zhou polities of central China during the late tenth to the early ninth centuries B.C.

The paper aims at analysing the social factors connected with the increase of sequential multiple burials around the first quarter of the Second Millennium BC in Egypt. In particular, in the late Middle Kingdom, the practice of multiple burials became more widespread across the whole country and it was more visible at all social levels, reaching also the uppermost levels of society and the royal court. Such a burial demography pattern can be linked with deeper transformations in the social organisation noticeable through iconographic, textual, linguistic, and archaeological evidence: an increase of plurality of people named/represented on stelae; a lexical deviation inside the vocabulary related to ‘familial’ groups (CT 146); the interruption in the archaeological record of the texts known as ‘Letters to the Dead’; the introduction of an uncommon architectural feature in the eastern Delta (Avaris), the ‘house of the dead’. The increase and spread on a preeminent scale of multiple burials drove a renegotiation of the role of the dead body within the burial assemblage. In the light of a changed burial demography, the tomb became the ideal memory container for supporting the identity of a more crowded household structure and dead bodies constituted the tangible mnemonic bridge to the past and social identity. Sequential multiple burials affected also temporality, and the passage of time increased the objectification of the body itself; therefore multiple bodies inside a grave may have influenced the selection of the range of objects to be placed in, as demonstrated by a consistent infiltration of the domestic sphere inside the funerary domain at the end of Twelfth Dynasty.

This article asks the question: What is a reproductive act? Ceramics produced by the South American Moche (AD. 150-800) depict a wide variety of sex acts but rarely feature vaginal penetration. The cross-cultural literature, especially from Melanesia and Amazonia , is used here to argue that the relationship between sex and reproduction has been variably defined , with many actsincluding anal and oral sex-sometimes perceived as reproductive. It contrasts notions of time found in Western ideas of procreation and in pornography to the expanded" reproductive time frame of kin-and lineagebased societies and argues that Moche ceramics, with their emphasis on the movement of fluids between bodies , do in fact portray a reproductive process. In the stratified context of Moche society, where these pots were produced for elite consumers who often placed them in tombs, these representations solidified the power of ancestors, elders, and elites. (Keywords: Moche, sex, reproduction)

Large-scale geographic variation in kinship systems may have deep roots. A number of authors now argue for an "emerging synthesis," with genetic, linguistic, and archeological findings coming together to paint a consistent picture of large-scale population spreads in prehistory. This article explores a social structural dimension of this synthesis: Major culture areas based on variation in kinship systems correspond closely—yet not perfectly—to genetic and linguistic clusters identified by other researchers. Thus it may be possible to reconstruct: (1) a set of "primary" culture areas corresponding to major population blocs and associated with ancient demic expansions and parallel transmission of genes and culture, and (2) a smaller set of overlying "secondary" culture areas of more recent origin that do not map onto genetic subdivisions and result from changes in subsistence or political economy independent of large-scale demic expansions. I also review latitudinal variation in kinship systems.

The conference 'Society and Morality in Eurasia' was scheduled to take place in December 2020 in Halle (Saale). It had to be postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and was eventually held as a hybrid event over three days in July 2021. The plenary lectures published in this booklet were delivered online in the same sequence in which they appear here in the evening of Wednesday 7th July. As the main organizer and host of the meeting, I am grateful to our invited speakers for allowing us to publish their contributions. They shared drafts with each other before and after the conference. For this publication, they were encouraged to refer to each other and to add a small number of notes and references, while retaining the informality of their oral presentations.

Cet article s'appuie sur une expérience pratique, sur nos connaissances actuelles de la physiologie de la lactation et des besoins nutritionnels du nourrisson, sur des considérations anatomiques, pratiques et affectives, et sur la relecture de données archéologiques, ostéologiques, chimiques et anthropologiques. Premièrement, il défend l'hypothèse selon laquelle une catégorie de petits récipients romains en terre cuite considérés comme des tire-lait sont en fait des biberons. Deuxièmement, une étude de la fonctionnalité de ces récipients met au jour trois fonctions potentielles, qui correspondraient respectivement à une utilisation par des enfants de moins de 6 mois, de plus de 6 mois, et par des adultes. Enfin, des hypothèses concernant le contexte funéraire dans lequel la majorité de ces récipients sont trouvés sont proposées.

The appearance and disappearance of Late Neolithic mega-sites in Central Anatolia are poorly understood. These huge agricultural settlements are all the more puzzling that they seem to be unknown from Southeast Anatolia, the area where the mixed-farming economy (along with its social counterpart, the Domestic Mode of Production) appeared first. In order to tackle these enigmas, the mere reading of the archaeological data will fall short of any convincing explanation. It seems necessary to adopt a sociological point of view, necessarily backed by the appropriate ethnological analyses. From this perspective, it must be acknowledged, before anything else, that the adoption of farming modifies deeply, in the long term, the internal structure of huntergatherer societies: the lineage becomes the relevant social unit, while marital alliances are more likely to be contracted with the outside world than within the kinship group. Moreover, this internal adjustment is heavy and slow, and this seems to be the reason why, in a context of lengthy diffusion, mega-sites are not seen equally everywhere. The social reaction to the new mode of production led to the advent of exogamic segmental lineages all over South-West Asia. This process seems however to have taken a markedly different path whether farming slowly came out independently, like in the Euphrates basin, or whether it was rapidly adopted by huntergatherers, like in Central Anatolia. The traditional social structure of the latter communities seems to have stood still long after farming began: the reciprocal marital practices (endogamous) appear to have prevented people from leaving the village, leading in time to an accumulation of population. On the contrary, the Euphratean societies, which witnessed the advent of sedentary life and agriculture from the beginning, had a millennium or so to adjust themselves to the Domestic Mode of Production; it is the resulting matrimonial flexibility that arguably allowed small farming sites to spread slowly over Northern Mesopotamia all through the later Neolithic, preventing the concentration of population at any one particular site.

The appearance and disappearance of Late Neolithic mega-sites in Central Anatolia are poorly
understood. These huge agricultural settlements are all the more puzzling that they seem to be unknown from
Southeast Anatolia, the area where the mixed-farming economy (along with its social counterpart, the Domestic
Mode of Production) appeared first. In order to tackle these enigmas, the mere reading of the archaeological data
will fall short of any convincing explanation. It seems necessary to adopt a sociological point of view, necessarily
backed by the appropriate ethnological analyses. From this perspective, it must be acknowledged, before
anything else, that the adoption of farming modifies deeply, in the long term, the internal structure of huntergatherer
societies: the lineage becomes the relevant social unit, while marital alliances are more likely to be
contracted with the outside world than within the kinship group. Moreover, this internal adjustment is heavy
and slow, and this seems to be the reason why, in a context of lengthy diffusion, mega-sites are not seen equally
everywhere.
The social reaction to the new mode of production led to the advent of exogamic segmental lineages all
over South-West Asia. This process seems however to have taken a markedly different path whether farming
slowly came out independently, like in the Euphrates basin, or whether it was rapidly adopted by huntergatherers,
like in Central Anatolia. The traditional social structure of the latter communities seems to have stood
still long after farming began: the reciprocal marital practices (endogamous) appear to have prevented people
from leaving the village, leading in time to an accumulation of population. On the contrary, the Euphratean
societies, which witnessed the advent of sedentary life and agriculture from the beginning, had a millennium or
so to adjust themselves to the Domestic Mode of Production; it is the resulting matrimonial flexibility that
arguably allowed small farming sites to spread slowly over Northern Mesopotamia all through the later
Neolithic, preventing the concentration of population at any one particular site.

Para la mayoría de los americanistas Jehan A. Vellard (1901-1996) es prácticamente un desconocido; para muchos es apenas una referencia bibliográfica más, o apenas el médico que acompañó a Claude Lévi-Strauss al Mato-Grosso. ¿Cómo es posible que no cite su trabajo Pierre Clastres, que trabaja con los aché apenas treinta años después que él? ¿O que al estudiar los venenos yanomamis Jacques Lizot diga que conoce su clásico sobre el curare pero prefiere ignorarlo?  Definitivamente, Vellard no es un contemporáneo. Su obra parece poco glamorosa y hasta anticuada, no tiene potencia heurística y, a diferencia de otros ancestros disciplinarios, no anticipa las preocupaciones de la antropología actual. Ni siquiera puede decirse que se trate de un gran escritor. Desterrado del linaje prestigioso de Nimuendaju, Nordenskiöld o el propio Lévi-Strauss, Vellard se nos presenta así como un personaje incómodo, antipático, un ancestro que funda una filiación imposible. Sin embargo, contentarse con ese diagnóstico sería demasiado fácil. Porque hay que preguntarse si las razones de este descarte disciplinar no dejan escapar una personalidad polifacética, testigo de tiempos críticos para el Chaco, los Andes o la Amazonía, y al mismo tiempo una obra multidisciplinaria que combina la etnografía, la antropología física, la lingüística, la arqueología y la biología. No se trata, en definitiva, de trazar un revisionismo que anule las contradicciones de la figura de Vellard, pero sí de revisar en detalle algunas de las expediciones científicas que realiza para el Museo del Trocadéro en la década de 1930, en particular los viajes al Paraguay (1931-32) en vísperas de la guerra del Chaco, y al Mato Grosso (1938) en la famosa expedición con Lévi-Strauss, y de repasar entonces las circunstancias específicas en las cuales se conforma parte de las colecciones etnográficas del museo. Dicho análisis permitirá a la vez echar nueva luz sobre las ambigüedades, los claroscuros y las aporías del legado personal y científico de Jehan A. Vellard.

V. ПЕДАГОГИЧЕСКАЯ ПРОЗА:

21. Линн Виссон Уроки воспитания Вани Смита  (дети в  российско-американских браках). Пер. с англ. М. Муравьёвой и  Б. Раббота.
22. Элизабет Р. Мур, Александр Эткинд, Утомленные солнцем, унесенные ветром:  суррогатное материнство в двух культурах
23. Лариса Лунякова, «Чем мужика кормить, лучше ребенка воспитывать одной»: социальный портрет материнских семей
24. Татьяна Снигирева, Алексей Подчиненов, «Сын за отца не отвечает?»: комплекс безотцовщины в советской литературе
25. Дмитрий Бычков, Пространство (без) семьи
26. Ребекка Кей “…Такие спортивные девчонки – как мальчики!»: о воспитании детей в постсоветской России. Пер. с англ. М. Муравьёвой.

VI. ПОЛИТИКА ЧАСТНОГО:

27. Олег Рябов, «Их нравы»: американская семья в зеркале советской пропаганды холодной войны
28. Наталия Данилова, Право матери солдата: инстинкт заботы или гражданский долг?
29. Катерина Непомнящая, Татьяна Толстая: текст семьи и семья в тексте. Генеалогия, гендер и риторика родословной. Пер. с англ. В. Непомнящего.
30. Сюзан Гал, Гейл Клигман, Формы государств, формы «семьи». Пер. с англ. М.Муравьёвой.
31. Татьяна Журженко, Старая идеология новой семьи: демографический национализм России и Украины
32. Галина Орлова, Cемь Я президента: призрак родства в российской политике 1990-х годов
33. Кирило Лукеренко, “Пожарная” организация власти: семейные кланы как принцип политической организации

VII. ЖИЗНЬ В ПУТИ:

34. Евгения Матханова, Наталья Матханова,“Здешнего моего семейства не брошу”: неравные браки и внебрачные дети декабристов
35. Катерина Клингсайз, За  мужем, за австрийцем: женские идентификации в рассказах о миграции
36. Елена Гапова, Жены "русских" программистов, или женщины, которые едут вслед за мужчинами.
37. Сергей Рязанцев, Семьи вынужденных мигрантов: проблемы, стратегии и перспективы адаптации

38. ИСПОЛЬЗОВАННАЯ ЛИТЕРАТУРА
39. ИЗБРАННАЯ БИБЛИОГРАФИЯ – составитель Сергей Канн.
40. СВЕДЕНИЯ ОБ АВТОРАХ

Historical and archaeological records help shed light on the production, ritual practices, and personhood of cult objects characterizing the central Peruvian highlands after ca. AD 200. Colonial accounts indicate that descendant groups made and venerated stone images of esteemed forebears as part of small-scale local funerary cults. Prayers and supplications help illuminate how different artifact forms were seen as honored family members (forebears, elders, parents, siblings). Archaeology, meanwhile, shows the close associations between carved monoliths, tomb repositories, and restricted cult spaces. The converging lines of evidence are consistent with the hypothesis that production of stone images was the purview of family/lineage groups. As the cynosures of cult activity and devotion, the physical forms of ancestor effigies enabled continued physical engagements, which vitalized both the idol and descendant group.

Мир «своих» и «чужих». По праву кровного родства: родовые структуры и брачные стратегии в прошлом и настоящем народов Евразии / The world of ‘Self’ and ‘Others’. By Right of Consanguinity: Clan structures and matrimonial strategies in past and present of Eurasian peoples

В этом выпуске мы предлагаем авторам и читателям рассмотреть проблему взаимоотношений между «своими» и «чужими» в рамках такого исследовательского направления как kinship studies.
Здесь, как ни в какой другой дисциплине, можно обнаружить нагляднейший и в то же время нетривиальный материал, который дает нам возможность изучать механизмы социального группирования и отчуждения / исключения. Различные системы родства и соответствующие им терминологии и иерархии могут показать внимательному наблюдателю как сходства, так и различия в стратегии и тактике интеграции / дифференциации сообществ, а метафоричность языка этих систем позволяет нам вернуться, возможно, на более высоком уровне обобщения, и к масштабу макро-анализа.

In this issue of “Tartaria Magna” we offer our authors and readers to consider a problem of interrelations between “insiders” and “outsiders” within kinship studies research trend. Here, as in no other scholarly discipline, one may come across most illustrative and, at the same time, unconventional research material giving us a chance to study mechanisms of social grouping and estrangement/exclusion. Various system of kinship and their relevant terminologies and hierarchies may expose to an attentive eye both similarities and differences in the strategy and tactics of community integration/differentiation. The metaphorical character of these systems allows us to return, perhaps, at a higher level of generalization, to macro-analysis.

A key issue in the approaches of Prepalatial social organization is the identification of the size and character of the basic social unit, that is the identification of distinctions between horizontally differentiated social groups, of approximately equal size and natural demographic composition. The importance of identifying the basic social unit(s) lies in the fact that membership of the horizontal social unit interferes with and determines the way a society functions, the character of the inter- and intra-societal relations, and other aspects of social life, including the social identity and status of individuals and groups. However, the reconstruction of the basic social unit in Prepalatial Crete has proved to be and still is a rather controversial issue.
In 2010, the idea of a Prepalatial society organized on the basis of corporate kin-based groups larger than the nuclear family has been brought back to the table through the application of the House Society model, or, better, through the transfer of the House Society model from the Postpalatial period backwards, to the Prepalatial period (Driessen 2010; 2012). However, this idea, together with previous theories concerning Prepalatial social organization share the same methodological pitfall. They implicitly or explicitly accept a basic premise that is far from being valid: that there is a direct link between living society and mortuary practices, and that the one reflects the other.
This paper discusses the pitfalls and problems of this premise, and tries to contribute to the discussion by a comparative study of funerary data from different areas and in different phases of the Prepalatial period. The final conclusion is that the identification of Prepalatial society as a House Society, as defined by Levi-Strauss and Gillespie is certainly questionable. Rather than identifying Prepalatial society as a House Society in general and across the island, it is more fruitful:
(a) to explore the possibility that Houses emerged as the result of the ability of one or few social groups to materialize their economic and social capital and become a House in Lévi-Straussian terms,
(b) to accept that the emergence of Houses is not a phenomenon that characterizes the entire island, throughout the Prepalatial period, but emerged in specific regions and sites (North and East Crete), in a specific period (EM IIB-III) and was related to specific socioeconomic factors.

A concise compilation of terms in Vade Mecum format AMINO ACIDS :Biologically important organic compounds composed of amine (-NH2) and carboxylic acid (-COOH) The key elements of an amino acid are carbon ,hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, though other elements are found in the side-chains of certain amino acids. In the form of proteins, amino acids comprise the secondlargest component (water is the largest) of human muscles, cells and other tissues.

Early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries are well-known because of their rich grave goods, but this wealth can obscure their importance as local phenomena and the product of pluralistic multi-generational communities. This book explores over one hundred early Anglo-Saxon and some Merovingian cemeteries and aims to understand them using a multi-dimensional methodology. The performance of mortuary drama was a physical communication and so needed syntax and semantics. This local knowledge was used to negotiate the arrangement of cemetery spaces and to construct the stories that were told within them. For some families the emphasis of a mortuary ritual was on reinforcing and reproducing family narratives, but this was only one technique used to arrange cemetery space. This book offers an alternative way to explore the horizontal organisation of cemeteries from a holistic perspective. Each chapter builds on the last, using visual aesthetics, leitmotifs, spatial statistics, grave orientation, density of burial, mortuary ritual, grave goods, grave robbing, barrows, integral structures, skeletal trauma, stature, gender and age to build a detailed picture of complex mortuary spaces. This approach places community at the forefront of interpretation because people used and reused cemetery spaces and these people chose to emphasise different characteristics of the deceased because of their own attitudes, lifeways and lived experiences. This book will appeal to scholars of Anglo-Saxon studies and will also be of value to archaeologists interested in mortuary spaces, communities and social differentiation because it proposes a way to move beyond grave goods in the discussion of complex social identities.

Dans la société traditionnelle l'ouverture et la nécessité de s'ouvrir aux "autres" sont sévèrement contrôlées et hautement codifiées. C'est notamment à travers une construction idéo-logique du système d'amitié qu'on s'ouvre à l'étranger en même temps que l'étranger gravite vers "nous". Dans la perspective de la conception traditionnelle il faut comprendre l'amitié non pas comme un sentiment affectif de la personnalité individuelle mais comme une relation fonctionnelle de la structure sociale. Cet interstice relationnel entre "nous" et les "autres" se réalise culturellement tout au long des événements sociaux et rencontres codifiées marquant la vie collective et les relations interpersonnelles des cycles de vie. Nous verrons dans cet article que l'amitié entretient une relation parallèle privilégiée avec l'alliance et le mariage et du même coup nous allons découvrir que les valeurs sociales de cette construction idéo-loqique sont placées sous le signe de l'ambivalence. Alliance et vengeance, amitié et hostilité ne sont que différentes expressions de la même relation structurelle.

Who buried the dead? Cemeteries contain the graves of people from local communities but the individual dead were buried by only a few members of that community, those that survived them. This article seeks to use detailed chronological information to analyse funerary data and proposes a system for establishing a generation-based dating scheme. Such a scheme advances studies of archaeological cemeteries by the discussion of life-time rather than end-of-life chronologies. This will enhance studies of social relationships, memory and the transmission of specific social identities by moving towards a more experiential archaeology. Specifically, I use a detailed study of three Anglo-Saxon cemeteries to investigate notions of social time. This article uses generational information in conjunction with other mortuary differentiations such as spatial location, age, life course, gender and grave-good wealth to show that Anglo-Saxon social status was determined by who was alive at any one time, and that the status of head of the household was not entirely determined by gender, but by who was able to fill the role.

Archaeological studies of kinship have been scarce in recent scholarship. Anglo-Saxon archaeology has tended to assume kinship was important without considering how or what the kindred’s role was within society or the burial rite. Recent studies of burial archaeology have focused on topical issues like age, gender or group identity without the context within which they exist: the family and household. This paper will begin to redress this imbalance by comparing the archaeological evidence of two Kentish cemeteries, Mill Hill and Finglesham, with the seventh-century legal sources, also from Kent. I will focus on cemetery organisation by considering grave location, burial wealth and grave structures. This paper builds on research by Heinrich Härke (1997a) who  successfully combined written sources and material evidence to offer an insightful and vivid picture of Anglo-Saxon social structure. I will offer the hypothesis that the seventh-century final phase burial rite involved not just a reduction in grave goods but also a transformation in the funerary rite and in the use of cemetery space. I will suggest that this is because the emphasis of the funeral changed from expressing the unity of  an extended household to emphasising familial relationships. This shift took place in a time when wealthy kindreds were increasingly in conflict with a newly powerful system of kingdoms.

The methods used by the Nazis to control elements of German society have been the focus of intense historical debate. This paper attempts to analyse the implementation of Sippenhaft (family liability punishment) after the 20 July 1944 assassination plot against Hitler. Sippenhaft was advocated for use against the families of the conspirators involved in this plot and also against members of the armed services. Consequently, its implementation became the personal domain of the Reich leader of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, as well as local army commanders, army courts and the Nazi party itself. This article will argue that the inadequacies of its imposition were largely compensated for by its effectiveness as a device of fear.

This chapter provides two answers to the question: "What do households do?" First, their members participate in craft activities and second, the social composition of these craft households evolves and changes through time. One type of craft activity that households practice is pottery making, but what happens to potters' households through time? How do they change? To answer these questions, I trace the changes in the composition and location of potters' households in Ticul, Yucatán, Mexico, between 1965 and 1997. By describing these changes, I hope to provide some insight into the processes that affect the organization of potters' households through time, and how those processes might be applicable to the study of ancient households. (This is a distillation and early version of pp. 31-91 in the author's "Social Change and the Evolution of Pottery Production and Distribution in a Maya Community" 2008, University Press of Colorado. See detail in "Books" above. Furthermore, a narrative account of these changes by type of production unit (Brumfiel and Earl's typology) and changes in extended family of potters through time along with changes in physical layout, and why is provided in another book: The Evolution of Ceramic Production Organization in a Maya Community (University Press of Colorado, 2015).

In 2005 four outstanding multiple burials were discovered near
Eulau, Germany. The 4,600-year-old graves contained groups of
adults and children buried facing each other. Skeletal and artifactual evidence and the simultaneous interment of the individuals suggest the supposed families fell victim to a violent event. In a multidisciplinary approach, archaeological, anthropological, geochemical (radiogenic isotopes), and molecular genetic (ancient DNA) methods were applied to these unique burials. Using autosomal, mitochondrial, and Y-chromosomal markers, we identified genetic kinship among the individuals. A direct child-parent relationship was detected in one burial, providing the oldest molecular genetic evidence of a nuclear family. Strontium isotope analyses point to different origins for males and children versus females. By this approach, we gain insight into a Late Stone Age society, which appears to have been exogamous and patrilocal, and in which genetic kinship seems to be a focal point of social organization.

The term four-room house is a generic term which refers to a new type of house which became extremely popular and dominant during the Iron Age. The "ideal type" of this structure is a long house with four main spaces or areas: a broad room at the back, and three long spaces stemming forward from it. These long rooms were typically (though not always) divided by a combination of stone pillars and walls. The entrance was usually located in the central (long) room. Not all houses, however, follow precisely this "ideal" plan, and there is some variation, mainly in the number of long rooms. One can therefore refer to three-, four-, and five-room houses (though all subtypes are usually referred to by the name "four-room house"). Variation also exists in the form of inner division(s) of the rooms, due probably to the lifecycle of the family. Apart from this, the basic plan is quite rigid and easy to identify.

Kinship and social structure have long been a major focus of anthropological research, mainly in the subfield of cultural anthropology. But recent small-scale societies are not the only ones organised along kinship relations, their counterparts in the past apparently followed the same patterns. When dealing with archaeological cultures two different approaches can be identified: the interpretation of material culture in terms of social kinship and the reconstruction of biological kinship by analysing the human skeletal remains from funerary contexts. Various methods have been used for the latter on a population and individual level. This article will discuss the recent application of current methods for two Neolithic sites; a collective grave of the Bernburg culture from Benzingerode and four Corded Ware culture multiple burials from Eulau, both located in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. From these examples it becomes evident that in these ancient societies social kinship, expressed in the funeral ritual by the spatial arrangement of the individuals within the grave, was also based on genetic kinship. Combined approaches, which consider social and biological relations and utilize insights from cultural anthropology, can reach the most detailed level of kinship reconstruction currently possible.

1. Einleitung                                                                                         1
2. Das Rätsel der "ewigen" zypriotischen Protodomestizierung 1
3. Das Rätsel um das Verschwinden der Rinder                         3
4. Endogamie und Mega-Standorte                                                 3

Contents

1. Introduction …………………………………………………….. 1
2. The enigma of the ‘everlasting’ Cypriot proto-domestication …. 1
3. The enigma of the disappearance of cattle ……………………... 3
4. Endogamy and mega-sites ……………………………………… 3
5. Conclusion ……………………………………………………… 3

Bridging the gap between feminist studies of motherhood and queer theory, Mothering Queerly, Queering Motherhood articulates a provocative philosophy of queer kinship that need not be rooted in lesbian or gay sexual identities. Working from an interdisciplinary framework that incorporates feminist philosophy and queer, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, and postcolonial theories, Shelley M. Park offers a powerful critique of an ideology she terms monomaternalism. Despite widespread cultural insistence that every child should have one—and only one—“real” mother, many contemporary family constellations do not fit this mandate. Park highlights the negative consequences of this ideology and demonstrates how families created through open adoption, same-sex parenting, divorce, and plural marriage can be sites of resistance. Drawing from personal experiences as both an adoptive and a biological mother and juxtaposing these autobiographical reflections with critical readings of cultural tex...

We sequenced the genomes of 15 skeletons from a 5,000-y-old mass grave in Poland associated with the Globular Amphora culture. All individuals had been brutally killed by blows to the head, but buried with great care. Genome-wide analyses demonstrate that this was a large extended family and that the people who buried them knew them well: mothers are buried with their children, and siblings next to each other. From a population genetic viewpoint, the individuals are clearly distinct from neighboring Corded Ware groups because of their lack of steppe-related ancestry. Although the reason for the massacre is unknown, it is possible that it was connected with the expansion of Corded Ware groups, which may have resulted in violent conflict.

Bridging the gap between feminist studies of motherhood and queer theory, Mothering Queerly, Queering Motherhood articulates a provocative philosophy of queer kinship that need not be rooted in lesbian or gay sexual identities. Working from an interdisciplinary framework that incorporates feminist philosophy and queer, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, and postcolonial theories, Shelley M. Park offers a powerful critique of an ideology she terms monomaternalism. Despite widespread cultural insistence that every child should have one—and only one—“real” mother, many contemporary family constellations do not fit this mandate. Park highlights the negative consequences of this ideology and demonstrates how families created through open adoption, same-sex parenting, divorce, and plural marriage can be sites of resistance. Drawing from personal experiences as both an adoptive and a biological mother and juxtaposing these autobiographical reflections with critical readings of cultural texts representing multi-mother families, Park advocates a new understanding of postmodern families as potentially queer coalitional assemblages held together by a mixture of affection and critical reflection premised on difference.

The third millennium BCE was a period of major cultural and demographic changes in Europe that signaled the beginning of the Bronze Age. People from the Pontic steppe expanded westward, leading to the formation of the Corded Ware complex and transforming the genetic landscape of Europe. At the time, the Globular Amphora culture (3300–2700 BCE) existed over large parts of Central and Eastern Europe, but little is known about their interaction with neighboring Corded Ware groups and steppe societies. Here we present a detailed study of a Late Neolithic mass grave from southern Poland belonging to the Globular Amphora culture and containing the remains of 15 men, women, and children, all killed by blows to the head. We sequenced their genomes to between 1.1- and 3.9-fold coverage and performed kinship analyses that demonstrate that the individuals belonged to a large extended family. The bodies had been carefully laid out according to kin relationships by someone who evidently knew the...

AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE,  SOCIETY FOR VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY, AMER. ANTHROP ASSOC, 1987; Grand Prize, Best Visual Ethnography on Arab Culture, Palermo, Sicily 1989.  The film is about the widespread ceremony called El Sebou' held on the seventh day after the biological birth of  girls and boys in Egypt.  This is a unique visual ethnography in that it is analytic not merely descriptive.  It has been awarded major international prizes.  It is widely used in classrooms of anthropology, rites of passage, family and gender.

       
El Sebou': Egyptian Birth Ritual awarded Grand Prize, best Ethnographic Film on Arab Culture,Palermo, 1989; AWARD FOR EXCELLENCESOCIETY FOR VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY 1987; Special Commendation, Royal Anthropological Institute Film Prize, 1988.
 
27-minute 16mm. color, funded by a Grant from the Smithsonian Institution, and sponsored by the Office of Folklife Programs, Smithsonian Institution. (Egyptian Celebration of Life Series) El Sebou': Egyptian Birth Ritual, 1986.

"Unique. There's nothing like it dealing with rites of passage, particularly in an urban setting, in the Middle East. It fills an important gap and tells the story very well…very well-done."
_______________    Professor Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban
                      Rhode Island College
"This is an ethnographic film in the best tradition of art and anthropology. It breathes life into Van Gennep's classic model of rites-of-passage."
______________Professor André Simic
                                                  University of Southern California
"A powerful bonding ceremony…watching this extraordinary film one has the feeling to be in their midst…a truly fascinating document in the best tradition of ethnographic filmmaking…a very balanced blend of emic and etic approaches."

__________Privadozent Dr. Wulf Schiefenhövel
                              Max-Planck Institute, Seewiesen, Germany

Two categories of reference constitute the social organisation of Albanian society. The notion of fisi ('lineage') represents the first, which is typifying, segmentary and holistic, while the second, classifying, linear and individualising, is represented in the notion of lisi i gjakut ('tree of blood'). These categories do not oppose each other as both pertain to a common logic of patrilineal descent. Unlike the segmentary regime, the linear one does not allow to account for the previous generations. Thus, when a large number of collateral parents acknowledge themselves as being part of a common 'tree of blood', they still have to qualify this through a second symbolic and hereditary marker, which, from a vertical axis, will complete the lack of memory and/or ramification. A fixation of the patronymic name in the broad sense - the transmissible family name - becomes then necessary. This ordered complementarity between the segmentary and the linear reveals itself as a sociological operator, the hierarchical nature of which allows the transactional opening in strategic relations oriented toward the other.

The third millennium BCE was a period of major cultural and demographic changes in Europe that signaled the beginning of the Bronze Age. People from the Pontic steppe expanded westward, leading to the formation of the Corded Ware complex and transforming the genetic landscape of Europe. At the time, the Globular Amphora culture (3300–2700 BCE) existed over large parts of Central and Eastern Europe, but little is known about their interaction with neighboring Corded Ware groups and steppe societies. Here we present a detailed study of a Late Neolithic mass grave from southern Poland belonging to the Globular Amphora culture and containing the remains of 15 men, women, and children, all killed by blows to the head. We sequenced their genomes to between 1.1- and 3.9-fold coverage and performed kinship analyses that demonstrate that the individuals belonged to a large extended family. The bodies had been carefully laid out according to kin relationships by someone who evidently knew the...

Except for a few remaining Yaminahua and Pacaguara, the Chacobo are currently the only Pano-speaking group of Bolivian Amazonia. We offer preliminary results of ongoing genealogical research about Chacobo marriage alliance by analysing a matrimonial network that involves the totality of Chacobo population (1049 people, 348 marriages and 21 settlements) during the period 2000-2010. The analysis reveals the importance of serial affinity, the translation of kinship in a spatial dimension, and that a proper understanding of Chacobo marriage can not be limited to the logical structure of the ´kinship system´. Any adequate understanding must also encompass a wider set of relations that include historical matters such as the mutable meaning of ethnonyms and social groups, the recycling of interethnic relationships, and the sociological impact of missionary activity.

Dans la societe traditionnelle l’ouverture et la necessite de s’ouvrir aux “autres” sont severement controlees et hautement codifiees. C’est notamment a travers une construction ideo–logique du systeme d’amitie qu’on s’ouvre a l’etranger en meme temps que l’etranger gravite vers “nous”. Dans la perspective de la conception traditionnelle il faut comprendre l’amitie non pas comme un sentiment affectif de la personnalite individuelle mais comme une relation fonctionnelle de la structure sociale. Cet interstice relationnel entre “nous” et les “autres” se realise culturellement tout au long des evenements sociaux et rencontres codifiees marquant la vie collective et les relations interpersonnelles des cycles de vie. Nous verrons dans cet article que l’amitie entretient une relation parallele privilegiee avec l’alliance et le mariage et du meme coup nous allons decouvrir que les valeurs sociales de cette construction ideo-loqique sont placees sous le signe de l’ambivalence. Alliance et v...

I outline a relational economy model that is broadly applicable to a range of economies both past and present. A relational economy begins from the basic premise that all economic transactions are social and interpersonal relations. I apply this model to reciprocal gift economies, specifically the Classic Maya of Mesoamerica (ca. AD 250–850). For my case study, I present evidence from archaeological contexts including the Bonampak murals and hieroglyphic texts to show how marriage and war were in many instances paired acts, simultaneously dissolving former alliances and cementing new social relations. Prestige goods including cacao (chocolate), jade, feathers, and cotton mantles were exchanged in both marriages and warfare. I show how marriage partners, captives, and prestige goods were not objectified in these reciprocal exchanges but were gendered and personified (human and nonhuman) beings. I present a posthumanist approach to a relational economy and suggest that prestige goods are perhaps best understood as relational beings or persons that were mutually constituted and generative. From a relational perspective, these transactions did not embed the social into the economic but were inherently emotional and interpersonal transactions and, therefore, simultaneously social and economic relations in ancient Maya society.