The Reconstruction of Kinship from Archaeological Data: The Concepts, the Methods, and the Feasibility

Abstract Archaeologists have recently attempted to reconstruct the residence and descent systems of particular prehistoric communities. Based on a study of residence and descent theory and pertinent examples from the ethnographic literature, we conclude that unless extremely detailed historical data exists, the analysis of kinship is best left to the ethnographer. The paper was conceived of as an attempt by archaeologically oriented anthropologists to resolve some of the difficulties encountered by us in our review of the archaeological literature on kinship reconstruction. We have, therefore, limited the scope of this paper accordingly; that is, it has been written principally with the problems of the archaeologist not the ethnographer in mind. An abbreviated version of this paper was presented at the 64th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association.