Living with Kin in Lowland Horticultural Societies

ROBERT S. WALKER; STEPHEN BECKERMAN; MICHAEL GURVEN; CHRIS VON RUEDEN; KAREN KRAMER; RUSSELL GREAVES; LORENA CÓRDOBA; DIEGO VILLAR; EDWARD HAGEN; JEREMY KOSTER; LAWRENCE SUGIYAMA,; TIFFANY HUNTER; KIM HILL

CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY

Chicago University Press - American Anthropological Association

Lugar: Chicago; Año: 2013 vol. 54 p. 96 - 103

0011-3204

Classical social organization studies examine postmarital residence decisions by asking whether or not couples generally reside with or near particular relatives after marriage. Historically, the standard method was to note the ideal arrangement or the most common type of residence pattern and to ignore variation. However, it can be difficult clearly to distinguish actual decisions made by individuals and the on-the-ground availability of kin of different categories from preferences for particular residence situations that may not be realized due to demographic constraints. Our method using actual coresidence information may offer some advantages over standard anthropological typologies by reporting and comparing counts of coresident kin. Stated cultural ?rules? may still be informative, however, since our method can only clearly distinguish moves between segments within villages from coresidence in the natal house when censuses are specific to multiple scales of analysis. Comparatively, postmarital residence patterns in traditional human societies figure prominently in models of social evolution with arguments for patrilocal human bands similar in structure to female-dispersal systems in other hominid societies. However, considerable flexibility in hunter-gatherer cultures has led to their characterization as primarily multilocal. Horticulturalists are associated with larger, more sedentary social groups with more political inequality and intergroup conflict and may therefore provide additional insights into evolved human social structures. We analyze coresidence patterns of primary kin for 34 New World horticultural societies (6,833 adults living in 243 residential groupings) to show more uxorilocality (women live with more kin) than found for hunter-gatherers. Our findings further point to the uniqueness of human social structures and to considerable variation that is not fully described by traditional postmarital residence typologies. Sex biases in coresident kin can vary according to the scale of analysis (household vs. house cluster vs. village) and change across the life span, with women often living with more kin later in life. Headmen in large villages live with more close kin, primarily siblings, than do nonheadmen. Importantly, human marriage exchange and residence patterns create meta-group social structures, with alliances extending across multiple villages often united in competition against other large alliances at scales unparalleled by other species.