Kin, Clan, and House: Social Relatedness in the Archaeology of North American Societies

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Kin, Clan, and House: Social Relatedness in the Archaeology of North American Societies," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Ethnographic and ethnohistoric accounts of non-state societies across the world have clearly demonstrated the centrality of social relatedness in structuring social, political, economic, and religious institutions. From the social organization of labor and subsistence economies, to rhythms and cycles of ritual practice, categories of social relatedness seem to underlie the most basic social forms. Although archaeologists often employ middle-range theories that move us towards social categories like lineages, clans, moieties, and houses, we continue to shirk away from fully exploring the role of these social groups in giving form to past societies, choosing instead to rely on more neutral concepts like "community of practice," "corporate group," or "signaling networks." In this session, participants are challenged to engage with concepts of social relatedness that have remained interpretively "difficult" for archaeologists. These include concepts related to descent groups, residence patterns, lineages, clan structures, or other dimensions of relatedness that are often regarded as "invisible" in the archaeological record.

Other Keywords
Mississippian • Social and Political Organization • Mortuary Analysis • Ceramic Analysis • Household Archaeology • Ancestral Pueblo • Ethnography/Ethnoarchaeology • Chaco Canyon • Theory • Kinship

Geographic Keywords
North America (Continent) • United States of America (Country) • USA (Country) • Kentucky (State / Territory) • Delaware (State / Territory) • Georgia (State / Territory) • Mississippi (State / Territory) • Missouri (State / Territory) • Tennessee (State / Territory) • North Carolina (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-10 of 10)

  • Documents (10)
Documents
  • Aztalan from the Perspective of Institutions of Social Relatedness (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lynne Goldstein.

    This is an abstract from the "Kin, Clan, and House: Social Relatedness in the Archaeology of North American Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological site of Aztalan is located between the modern cities of Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin, and is commonly identified as Mississippian, dating to about AD 1000. The site has been known since the 1800s, and many amateur and professional archaeologists have excavated there. Much of...

  • Beyond the Household: The Evolution of Nonresidential Organizations During the Southwest Neolithic (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only John Ware.

    This is an abstract from the "Kin, Clan, and House: Social Relatedness in the Archaeology of North American Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The basic building blocks of human communities are residential groups held together by ties of kinship. As communities increase in number and size during the Neolithic, residential kinship groups persist, of course, but new institutions may emerge that draw their members from multiple residential...

  • Exploring Kinship Ties through Mortuary Practice at Cahokia’s Ridge-top Mounds (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Baires.

    This is an abstract from the "Kin, Clan, and House: Social Relatedness in the Archaeology of North American Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Kinship, roughly defined, is a web of social relationships forming a central part of human lives. Kinship contextualizes patterns of behavior, familial ties, socialization, parenting, and relationships that extend beyond biological affinity. In this paper I explore how kinship ties (fictive or...

  • House Society Models in Anthropological and Archaeological Theory: Chaco Canyon and the Prehispanic American Southwest. (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Carrie Heitman.

    This is an abstract from the "Kin, Clan, and House: Social Relatedness in the Archaeology of North American Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years, a growing number of archaeologists have explored the potential of expanding Lévi-Strauss’s concept of "house societies" to better understand local as well as regional development sequences. In this paper, I draw on the work of cultural anthropologists as well as archaeologists to...

  • Kinship, Clanship, and the Incorporation of Newcomers in Northern Iroquoian Society (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Micon. Jennifer Birch. Louis Lesage.

    This is an abstract from the "Kin, Clan, and House: Social Relatedness in the Archaeology of North American Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we consider how institutions of social relatedness played crucial roles in Huron-Wendat society and how categories of biological and fictive kinship (e.g., lineages, clans, nations) structured processes of social integration, political affiliation, and adoption. We argue that...

  • Maize, Womanhood, and Matrilineality: A Study from the Mississippian Site of Moundville, Alabama (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Briggs.

    This is an abstract from the "Kin, Clan, and House: Social Relatedness in the Archaeology of North American Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ethnohistoric and ethnographic evidence demonstrates that various factors can influence kinship patterns, but among the most influential are those related to subsistence. However, such findings are rarely applied to the prehistoric American South, where researchers largely project the matrilineal...

  • Of Longhouses and Lineages: Evaluation of Transformations in Maritime Archaic Social Organization in the Far Northeast (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Wolff. Donald Holly.

    This is an abstract from the "Kin, Clan, and House: Social Relatedness in the Archaeology of North American Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The social organization of Maritime Archaic groups of Newfoundland and Labrador is notoriously difficult to assess due to poor preservational environments, challenging logistics of working in the Subarctic, and a paucity of research directly applicable to such questions; however, a long chronological...

  • Secret Societies, Power, and Ritual among Hunter-Gatherers in California (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lynn Gamble.

    This is an abstract from the "Kin, Clan, and House: Social Relatedness in the Archaeology of North American Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Secret societies are groups of individuals that possess esoteric knowledge that is not available to non-members, and therefore are by definition exclusive. Many such societies are associated with administering ritual ceremonies. The Chumash Indians of southern California had a secret society known as...

  • Social-Relatedness and Power: Determining Lineages and Multi-Clan Connections within a Singular Housepit (HP54) (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Hampton. Anna Marie Prentiss.

    This is an abstract from the "Kin, Clan, and House: Social Relatedness in the Archaeology of North American Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper focuses on understanding how lineage-based and clan-based connections structured labor patterns and access to prestige/power within a multi-generational housepit (HP54) over time. The Bridge River site (EeRl4), located in the Mid-Fraser Canyon, British Columbia, Canada, was generally...

  • Women's Networks and the Foundations of Mississippian Politics (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Lulewicz. Lynne Sullivan.

    This is an abstract from the "Kin, Clan, and House: Social Relatedness in the Archaeology of North American Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mississippian societies were undoubtedly underwritten by networks of kin, clan, and other social relationships that are difficult to discern in the archaeological record. Structures of social networks provide contexts for social, political, and economic institutions and serve as conduits through...