Kinship Diagrams/Charts

One of the most useful ways to study relationships between different people in any given social group is to study how they are related to each other. A kinship diagram allows anthropologists to map out the different relations between people so that they can get a better idea of how those relationships function.

Indicating Gender

First, you will draw circles (O) to represent females, triangles (Δ) to represent males, and a square (□) to represent persons of undetermined gender. If a person is dead, strike an X through their circle or triangle to indicate this.

Indicating Marriage and Cohabitation

A “=” between two symbols indicates marriage between these two individuals, while a “≈” between two symbols indicates two cohabitating individuals who are not married. A “~” sign indicates that they are parents, but neither cohabitate nor are married. This can also be used to indicate homosexual couples, such as Δ~ Δ.

If a marriage ends in divorce, use “≠”, as in Δ≠O. A person with two spouses can be drawn with one on either side, as with O=Δ=O (a man with two wives) or Δ=O= Δ (a woman with two husbands. Again, if one of the spouses is dead, the respective circle or triangle would have an X through it.

Indicating Descent

A solid line directly from the equals sign or other symbol indicates biological descent. Adoptive descent is indicated by a dotted line. If the parents are unknown, you can draw a solid bar connecting the brothers and sisters without drawing in the parents.

Example:

Why "Kinship" and not just "Relatives"?

Anthropologists are quite fond of the term "kinship" when many Americans and people in other western cultures are content with "family" and "relatives." Why is this?

It is critical for anthropologists to understand ‘kinship’ because it defines the society around us, organizes us into set groups, and defines what we can and cannot do. A ‘kinship’ group helps to determine roles in all aspects of life and helps structure the behavior of individuals. However, the rest of the world does not necessarily define ‘kinship’ in the same ways that we do. The idea of ‘kinship’ as we know it in the West is not a universal idea, and so anthropologists must go beyond the terms ‘families’ and ‘relatives’ to understand the term ‘kinship.’

In the village of Ratakote in Rajasthan, India, people are born into a very strict kinship system called an arak. Children are born into an arak, or clan, and given the name of that arak. Even when women marry and join the araks of their husbands, they still retain the name of the arak that they were born into. It is a kinship system designed to provide strength and stability in their society. It is also critical to their practice of arranged marriages. People “tap into their kinship network to find out personal information about prospects.” Knowing their own arak and the arak of prospective brides and grooms assures that they will not marry their own relatives. The notion of belonging to a clan or kinship group of this sort also shows how critical family loyalty is in the Indian culture. For example, an Indian friend of mine applied as an undergraduate to Stanford University, but refused to tell me whether she had gotten in or not before she had told her parents. This devotion to relatives can somewhat be seen in American culture, but to a much lesser extent. Often Americans have other non-blood relative kinship networks that they rely on instead of their families.

Another example of a culture with a different view on kinship is the Na people of Southern China. What marks their kinship system is that they have no marriage. Instead, men and women take lovers that come secretly in the night. The children are raised by the mother, but do not recognize having a father. Women live with their brothers, who take care of their sister’s children as if they were their own. Kinship is defined only by their mothers.

In Malaysia, kinship rules are even further from the Western system. There, feeding defines who the mother is. Since children are often fed by women other then the birth mother, it is the other women who are called ‘mother.’ Also, what defines a ‘father’ is whoever donates semen throughout the pregnancy. This means that there could possibly be several fathers in their kinship group.

It is quite evident that even our notion of a father and a mother are not universally held, effectively dashing our ethnocentric view of kinship. Yet even in our own culture we have a very flexible idea of who is kin and who is not. For example, the most commonly held idea is that you must be biologically related to be kin. However, in the case of adopted children, there is no blood tie; yet there is still a strong bond of kinship between the adopted child and their adopted parents.

The idea of kinship, that people are in some way connected to each other, is a very fluid concept that shifts and changes from one culture to another. While all humans feel connected to others in some form or another, there are many different ways to define those relationships and the structured behavior that accompanies them. Anthropologists study the differences between kinship systems because it gives great insight into the behaviors, traditions, and taboos of each society.

Indiana Jones: Good or Bad for Archaeology?

If you ask the average person, "Do real archaeologists go running around getting shot at like Indiana Jones?" you will inevitably hear, "Of course not. That's just Hollywood."

Well, that's not entirely true.

It is true that most of archaeology happens in the library and the lab. There is a lot of research done before any fieldwork is undertaken, and in between seasons (archaeologists often work on a site for ten or more years, but only during the warmer months) there is a lot of labwork to be done. Many archaeologists spend a great deal of time teaching, as well.

It is also true that many archaeologists have more adventures wading through governmental red tape than battling bad guys.

But every once in a while, Indiana Jones is not that far off the mark.

A professor of mine, visiting from the University of Damascus, told me of how he went searching for Genghis/Chinggis Khan's tomb in Mongolia. He did not found the tomb before the Mongolian government took over, but he was chased on horseback across the steppes by raiders with guns, a lethal bunch called "yogurt raiders."

While most archaeologists don't have adventures like Indiana Jones or my professor, archaeologists still love the movies. Many archaeologists began with an interest in Indiana Jones and later discovered that they were quite fascinated by archaeology in its own right.

I think that archaeology is no worse for wear thanks to the Indiana Jones movies for one thing in particular: They capture the romance of the discovery of ancient artifacts. This is the real reason that archaeologists love their work. (It's certainly not for the money!)

What is "Culture"?

Many people have asked me, “So what is culture anyways?” That seems like such a simple question, but in reality it is one of the hairiest questions I have come across. In 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. With that in mind, here are a few definitions on the web:

• a particular society at a particular time and place; such as "early Mayan civilization"
• the tastes in art and manners that are favored by a social group; “he is a cultured man”
• acculturation: all the knowledge and values shared by a society
• the attitudes and behavior that are characteristic of a particular social group or organization; "the developing drug culture"; "the reason that the agency is doomed to inaction has something to do with the FBI culture".

All are correct, yet none of them encompass everything that the English word, “culture” refers to.

For anthropologists and other behavior scientists, such as sociologists and psychologists, the term “culture” refers specifically to the full range of learned human behavior patterns. The term was first used in this way by the pioneer English Anthropologist Edward B. Tylor in his book, Primitive Culture, published in 1871.  Tylor said that culture is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." Since Tylor’s time, this concept of culture has been the guiding premise of anthropology, the study of human culture.

Human beings are not born with a full set of instincts like animals, yet we thrive. Many anthropologists believe that culture is the key, the way that each group of humans “fills in the blanks” in our instincts. We are born completely helpless, and over the course of one to two decades of living with our parents, we learn practically everything that we need to know to survive in the world. While many animals teach their young specific skill such as hunting, no animal comes close to the depth and complexity of human culture.

“Culture” can mean many things, but anthropologists generally agree that culture is the full range of learned human behavior patterns.

What is Anthropology?

First things first: Anthropology in its simplest terms is anything and everything that has to do with human life on earth. How humans cope with life and death, how humans survive in the world, or how different groups of humans interact, differ, and are similar are just a few of the countless things that an anthropologist can study.

Indiana Jones as a professor--how most
real archaeologists survive.

I received my Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology with an emphasis in Archaeology, which, in the American school of Anthropology, is one of the four main branches of the field of anthropology: Archaeology, Socio-cultural Anthropology, Biological or Physical Anthropology, and Linguistic Anthropology. Archaeologists study the remains of cultures of the past. Physical or biological anthropologists study the physical attributes of humans, and linguistic anthropologists study human language and how it defines and is defined by culture. Socio-cultural anthropologists, are those who immerse themselves in a particular culture to learn more about it, usually to learn about a specific aspect of that culture. Each one of these four branches of anthropology consists of countless paths to follow in the never-ending exploration of the human condition. There is a niche for just about everyone.

Anthropology is defined by a single, pervasive question: “What does it mean to be human?”