WILLIAM F. KEEGAN an ANTHROPOLOGICAL EVALUATION of TAINO KINSHIP INTRODUCTION This Is the Fourth in a Series of Papers in Which

WILLIAM F. KEEGAN

AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL EVALUATION OF TAINO KINSHIP

INTRODUCTION

This is the fourth in a series of papers in which the social and political organizations of the Tainos are examined. The first paper, presented at the Society for American Archaeology meeting in 1987, explored the relationship between patterns of settlement and social organization (Keegan 1987). The second, published in American Anthropologist, is an archeo-ethnological collaboration in which ethnographic information was used to reconstruct Taino kinship and changes in Lucayan settlement patterns were used to examine Melvin Ember's (1974) model of the evolution of avunculocal residence (Keegan and MacLachlan 1989). The third paper, presented at the "Processual/Post-Processual Debate," further developed a materialist model of Taino social organization and described the research methodology used to explore that model (Keegan 1990). Rather than review those previous studies, I wish to begin the present paper with the assumption that Taino sociopolitical organization can be characterized as an avunculocal chiefdom. Assume, if you wish, that Rouse (1948) in the Handbook of South American Indians described the Tainos as practicing matrilineal descent, and avunculocal residence rather than patrilocal residence. That is the basis for the present paper, which is presented in three parts. First, I define what I mean by avunculocal chiefdom; second, I describe some of the more important behavioral implications; and third, I explore the archaeological implications of such an organization.

AVUNCULOCAL CHIEFDOMS

The term "avunculocal chiefdom" contains both social and political implications. Avunculocal residence involves the movement of males at adolescence to live with a real or classificatory maternal uncle where they are joined at marriage by their wives. Chiefdom refers to a type of political organization in which a centralized hierarchy of leaders is set off from the rest of the population (Earle 1987). These terms are combined to describe a form of kinship-based political organization in which the male leaders, of, for example, a matrilineage or larger political entity, are succeeded in their leadership positions by one of their sister's sons. The term "avunculocal chiefdom" rather than "avunculocal society" is used because a polity can be organized through avunculocal residence without the entire society residing avunculocally. Marriage distances are usually short in matrilocal societies so the men of a matrilineage can routinely assemble for political and ritual activities (Schneider and Gough 1961). However, as inventives to assemble the men of a matrilineage increases, it is not possible to localize all of the men all of the time. Instead the objective of clan chiefs or war leaders would be to assemble a

437 retinue of capable and loyal followers from among their matrikin. Other individuals may continue to live matrilocally, and as avunculocality accustoms the population to the movement of women at marriage, still others may choose to live patrilocally. Thus, ethnographers have found a mixture of residential choices among such groups (Aberle 1961; Adams 1973; Goodenough 1955; Weiner 1976).

CHARACTERISTICS OF AVUNCULOCAL CHIEFDOMS

Avunculocality is a curious phenomenon in that it usually requires both sexes to change domicile. Explaining why a people would so complicate their domestic lives becomes all the more interesting in view of the custom's wide dispersal across societies of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. Thus, the practice can not be attributed to the peculiarities of a particular historical tradition, but arose independently on a number of occasions. Three factors are commonly cited as influencing the emergence of unilocal residence in which related persons of one sex are grouped in extended families: 1) the sexual division of subsistence labor, 2) the prevalence and form of warfare, and 3) aspects of gender relations, especially marital relations, arising from work, warfare, and migration. The division of labor was the first to receive serious attention in a hypothesis suggesting that related members of the harder working sex would be localized in the interest of efficiency and economic solidarity (Driver and Massey 1957; Linton 1936; Murdock 1949). Subsequent cross-cultural studies have revealed only weak and inconsistent associations between residence and the division of labor (Ember and Ember 1971; Divale 1974, Peterson 1982). Warfare is a better predictor of residence patterns, especially when modified by aspects of gender relations in specific situations. In stateless societies where warfare is prevalent, the form of warfare exerts a strong influence arising from the fact that men are the warring sex (Ember and Ember 1971). If warfare features internal conflict among members of the same society, residence is usually patrilocal irrespective of the division of labor. When residence is not patrilocal under conditions of internal warfare, it is usually avunculocal. The more common patrilocal variant arises from the importance of alliances among fathers, sons, and brothers in the face of internal feuding and raiding. If neighbors are hostile, the men of a descent group will not be dispersed at marriage. Melvin Ember (1974) portrays avunculocal residence as emerging in response to internal warfare in a society that had previously adapted to external warfare through matrilocal residence. He notes that all avunculocal societies have internal warfare. They also have matrilineal descent groups, although there are others with patrilineal descent groups (double descent) as well. Further, whereas polygyny is relatively uncommon among matrilocals for a number of practical and political reasons (Murdock 1949), polygyny is widespread among avunculocal peoples. Among societies with double descent, polygyny is far more prevalent among the avunculocals than among the patrilocals. These phenomena co-occur as follows (Ember 1974). Warfare seems to provide an impetus for the emergence of unilocal residence and strong unilineal descent groups, whether patrilineal or matrilineal. If internal warfare commences in a society with well-developed matrilineal descent groups, there arise incentives to form

438 strong localized alliances of related males. Established social practices provide little or no opportunity to base local groups on common paternity or to khit together larger alliances on the basis of common patrilineal descent. Matrilineal descent provides the one well-established nexus around which such coalitions can form, and avunculocal residence effectively recomposes localized groups of matrilineally related men who would have been dispersed under matrilocal residence (Fox 1967). Widespread polygyny under avunculocal residence is significant in several ways. First, polygyny is more common where high warfare mortality among males creates an imbalanced sex ratio in spouse pools. Thus, Ember (1974) believes, the association of polygyny with avunculocality may indicate high warfare mortality among males and a high rate of widow remarriage. If so a woman's sons are less likely to share a common father, leaving common maternity as the sure basis of fraternal solidarity and strengthening the persistence of matrilineal descent groups. Second, polygyny provides the avunculocally residing man with the same benefits conferred by patrilocality but denied by matrilocality (Murdock 1949). Through avunculocality a man can bring together multiple wives in a single domicile without their being sisters, and in matrilocal residence, and can thereby create marital alliances with a number of groups in the same way that patrilocally residing men can. Moreover, like his patrilocal counterpart, a powerful man can spend his entire adult life in a single domicile amassing and controlling wealth. Finally, it appears that avunculocal residence can offer powerful men opportunities they would not enjoy through patrilocality. Under patrilocal residence marital alliance amounts to keeping sons and exchanging daughters. Under avunculocal residence a man can potentially influence the marital destiny and residence of nieces and nephews as well as sons and daughters. A polygynous chief who succeeds a maternal uncle sends sons he has reared to the kin of their mothers where they may succeed to positions of influence. In return he stands to receive the sons of sisters and half-sisters as co-residing nephews under his own influence, whom he controls through the manipulation of succession and access to resources. Likewise, he can influence the marital destinies of his daughters, because they reside with him, as well as those of his sister's daughters due to his prominence in their matrilineal group. Obviously, no one could accomplish this degree of influence without holding a good deal of political and economic power in the first place, but it is this extraordinary potential of avunculocality for the concentration of power within a system of kinship and marriage that led us to propose that it may have become institutionalized among Classic Taino elites (Keegan and Maclachlan 1989). In addition to its association with matrilinealty and internal warfare, avunculocality is also associated with the division of a society into warring chiefdoms. Military and political entrepreneurship may be the key elements in the emergence of the avunculocal chief dom. While the initial transition to avunculocality may well be a defensive measure in the face of internal conflicts in a matrilineal society, its institutionalization may result from efforts by chiefs and their subordinates to turn internal conflict to their own advantage by manipulating marriage, residence, and succession in order to concentrate power in chiefdoms that become parties to internal conflict. The great advantage conferred by matrilineal succession in the avunculocal chiefdom is that it provides for orderly transfers of power while allowing considerable latitude in the choice of a successor. Under patrilineal succession, a chief is normally succeeded by one of his sons; under matrilineal succession a chief may choose any of his sister's sons, indeed virtually any man of his matrilineage. Avunculocal residence assembles potential candidates in or near the chief's household and under his supervision. The succession may be contested, but the power of a chief to choose his successor from a variety of candidates, whom he can call to live with him, insures the allegiance of candidates and motivates them to achieve the chief's objectives. For an avunculocal chiefdom to emerge a single matrilineal group must achieve paramount status. It is no accident of history that avunculocal chiefdoms persisted in highly circumscribed environments, islands or areas of highly concentrated resources. Circumscribed environments may foster internal conflict that ceases only when one group achieves hegemony through greater numerical strength, better leadership, or command of a strong defensive position centered on a prime site of habitation or astride trade routes. If there are a series of such circumscribed environments in a region, a series of such polities may emerge. These polities may continue to war and trade with one another because no one of them can sustain the extension of its power beyond its circumscribed boundaries by conquering and incorporating others. The ethnographic model identifies a sequence of socio-political development that should be visible in the archeological record. We would expect to find evidence for a matridominant division of labor, male absence engendered by some combination of warfare and long-distance exchange, patterns of warfare shifting from external to internal, the localization of matrilineally related males, polygyny and bride price, the development of ranked lineages, and the localization of wealth in the hands of elites and chiefs.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

In previous studies I have argued that changes in Lucayan settlement patterns from random to regular pairs to clustered of joined paris reflects the increasing localization of males in response to population growth and resource depletion (Keegan 1987, 1990). Furthermore, ethnographic analogy suggests that females were the harder-working sex in Taino agriculture and there are ethnohistoric reports of polygyny, bride price, and the emergence of elites and a political hierarchy headed by chiefs (Keegan and MacLachlan 1989). The remainder of my comments will therefore focus on the missing element, male participation in warfare and long-distance exchange, especially as these may have been expressed during the initial colonization of the Antilles. In the first place, the risk accruing during the initial colonization of islands by people with a horticultural economy were sufficient to maintain weak forms of matrilineal descent and matrilocal residence (Keegan and Diamond 1987). These social structures would have been reinforced by male absence associated with migrations and long-distance exchange (Divale 1974; Peterson 1982); as well as by external conflicts or the threat of such conflicts (Ember 1974; Ember and Ember 1971). Male absence in long-distance exchange can be inferred from ethnohistoric sources along with recent studies of material exchanges. For example, Columbus's descriptions of the Lucayans include reference to regular long-distance trade with

440 the Greater Antilles (Dunn and Kelley 1989). Stockpiles of cotton bear out that observation as does quartz-sand-tempered pottery from the Greater Antilles that is found at low frequency in Lucayan sites (Keegan 1988; Rose 1987). In addition, the presence of a "gateway community", a Taino outpost established on Middle Caicos to manage trade between the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas, indicates the importance of trade between these islands (Sullivan 1981). Because trade between the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas required the crossing of water gaps in excess of 100 miles, it was clearly ling-distance exchange and would have carried with it significant risks. Recent studies of Saladoid period artifacts, such as "green stone" pendants and polished petaloid celts, have demonstrated that long-distance exchange was important from the beginning of the Ceramic Age colonization of the Antilles (Boomert 1987; Cody 1989). Although such "high status" or "exotic" materials may have moved predominantly around elite ranks, the movement of goods between commoners is also expected. These types of exchanges are fostered by kinship ties that extend across political boundaries. Such cross-cutting ties may be responsible for the apparently peaceful character of Taino political relations at the time of European contact. As expected, sourcing studies of utilitarian objects (e.g. basalt axes, pottery) are showing that these too were exchanged, possibly over substantial distances (Fandrich 1989; Donahue et al. 1990). In sum, the evidence that is available today indicates that males may have been absent in long-distance exchanges for periods sufficient to reinforce a matridominant social organization. Additional research is needed to document the volume of trade and the distances covered during episodes of exchange. Warfare, which is unquestionably attributed to the Tainos (Keegan and Maclachlan 1989; Sauer 1966; Wilson 1990), should also have antecedents in the initial colonization of the Antilles. One possibility, as predicted by the avunculocal model, is that warfare characterized the relationship between the Saladoid and Archaic Age inhabitants of the Antilles (Rouse 1986; Siegel 1989). In this scenario, after the pacification or extermination of the external Archaic threat, a period of peaceful development occurred. This peace was finally broken as conflicts developed between neighboring horticultural groups in response to intensified competition over resources. These internal disputes would escalate through the formation of the warring Taino chiefdoms. Peter Siegel (1989) has interpreted evidence of homicide in two Saladoid burials at the Maisabel site, Puerto Rico, as reflecting battles between Archaic and Saladoid groups. The presence of a sting ray spine projectile in the rib cage of one of these individuals is compelling evidence of homicide. However, the second individual, whose wounds are characterized by cut marks on the humerus and the absence of the arm distal to the elbow, may in fact be the victim of a shark attack. Furthermore, Peter Roe (1989a, 1989b) has interpreted the same evidence, in conjunction with human corporeal art, as reflecting antagonisms between Saladoid and Huecoid groups (i.e. between quite similar horticultural groups). In sum, the degree to which raiding or warfare characterized early Ceramic Age groups remains unclear. The question of warfare at this and later time periods demands additional archaeological attention so that we may better trace the trajectory that ended with the warring Taino chiefdoms. Such warfare certainly has antecedents among earlier groups.

441 CONCLUSIONS

The ethnographie model of the formation of avunculocal chiefdoms provides a good fit with ethnohistoric accounts of the Tainos (Casas 1951; Fewkes 1907; Loven 1935; Rouse 1948; Wilson 1990). In addition, the model also helps to resolve a number of paradoxes. For example, the Tainos were described as one Culture, but not one culture - they were Tainos, Ciguayos, Macorix, Lucayans, and Ciboneys: and they all spoke the same Language, as well as several mutually unintelligible languages (Casas 1951). The present model provides a framework in which such cultural and linguistic, perhaps even biological and genetic, diversity can be accommodated. Furthermore, the kinds of evolutionary pathways that would lead to the development of avunculocal chiefdoms are also in evidence beginning with the Ceramic Age colonization of the Antilles. Although additional research is needed, it can presently be inferred that male absence in long-distance trading and raiding contributed to the formation of a matridominant social organization that was the foundation upon which Taino society developed.

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