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,