Proto Oceanic (Austronesian) and Proto East Bantu (Niger-Congo) kin terms ca. 1000 BC.
Authors
Marck, J.
Bostoen, K.
Discipline
Sociology
Subject
Culture & Society
Audience
Scientific
Date
2010Publisher
University of Utah Press
Metadata
Show full item recordDescription
Proto Oceanic society (ca. 1000 BC} and Proto East Bantu society (ca. 500 BC) were expanding farming societies and are here held to have been matrilineal, matrilocal societies with bifurcate merging kin term systems. Matrilineality s motive in both instances is held to be the matrilocal response to migration and migration s warfare described by Divale with, in the instance of Proto Oceanic society, an additional association of matrilocality with long distance seafaring and its extended absences of men and, in the instance of Proto East Bantu society, an additional association of matrilocality with regular absences of men due to hunting. Proto East Bantu and Proto Oceanic parental generation kin terms agree in being bifurcate merging which is typical of lineal societies. Cognatic and patrilineal daughters speckle Oceanic s landscape while East Bantu societies seem always lineal, the prescriptive alliance systems of the East Bantu possibly holding lineality in bolder relief in the social ethos. It is also observed that Proto East Bantu society had male age-grade societies and Proto Oceanic society did not, another difference that may have conserved matrilineality in most Proto East Bantu society daughters as the age-grades gave opportunity and order to male political ambitions. Junod s suspicion of matrilineality in the past of the patrilineal Southern Bantu due to strong man s sister s child institutions is vindicated, Radcliffe-Brown s counter-example of Polynesia s Tonga now being dismissed as a case of another patrifocal society with a matrilineal past. Divale s notions concerning shifts to matrilocality upon migration and the subsequent devolvement of matrilineal institutions over two and three thousand year periods are affirmed in all details examined.
Citation
Marck, J.; Bostoen, K. (2010). Proto Oceanic (Austronesian) and Proto East Bantu (Niger-Congo) kin terms ca. 1000 BC.. , Kinship, Language, and Prehistory: Per Hage and the Renaissance in Kinship Studies, 83-94, University of Utah Press,Identifiers
Type
Book chapter
Peer-Review
Yes
Language
eng