Crafting Prehispanic Maya Kinship

1. A Brief History of Ancient Maya Kinship Studies

1 a Brief History of ancient Maya Kinship studies The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate the trends and diversity in interpretation on prehispanic Maya kinship. The following does not attempt to describe the different kinship models—the subject of Chapter 2—but instead is intended to provide a better understanding of the history of thought on this subject. In the following historical outline, different periods are distinguished by the introduction of new perspectives and interpretations and by their relationships with broader trends in anthropological theory. as the reader will observe, during any given “period” of interpretation there were multiple,competing models and debates.The chapter ends with some general observations on “traditions” in the study of ancient Maya kinship,which are important to understanding this area of research and the reoccurring problems described in Chapter 3. structural Functionalism Tozzer (1907) and Beals (1932) provided some of the earliest depictions of Maya kinship. The earliest work that had a lasting influence to the present was a pioneering study by eggan (1934).eggan examinesyucatecan kin terms listed in the Motul Dictionary (dated to the late 16th century) and in the Beltrán Dictionary (first printed in 1746) (eggan 1934:189). In line with radcliffeBrown ’s functionalist approaches at the time,when kin terminologies were being associated with their social functions, eggan used the Motul and Beltrán terms to interpret Maya social organization and marriage. He also assumed the historic documentary evidence was characteristic of the ancient Maya. He concluded that the nomenclature reflects a system that distinguishes cross cousins.Based on cross-cultural ethnological knowledge of the time,this kin 16 / Chapter 1 terminology system was associated with cross-cousin marriage, exogamous unilineal descent groups,and “daughter exchange” by households.supported partially by Beals’s (1932) examination of Fray diego de landa’s Relación de las Cosas deYucatán, eggan (1934) concluded that Maya kinship involved unspecified patrilineal descent groups (suggesting moieties or clans) with crosscousin marriage. Throughout the middle of the last century,structural functionalism maintained its preeminence and kinship studies, particularly classificatory analyses of kin terms and their linkages with social organization and marriage among non-Western societies, were practically synonymous with anthropology .approaches to ancient Maya kinship therefore continued to favor the use of kin terminologies and names recorded in historic documents,with the same assumption that these characterize the preconquest Maya. In a major work, roys (1940) examined 16th-century yucatec names, revealing a pattern whereby individuals maintained patronyms and matronyms. Through ethnological association,that observation led roys to the hypothesis that the ancient Maya had both patrilineal descent and matrilineal descent (double descent). The 1960s was a pivotal decade for the topic of prehispanic Maya kinship and marks the beginning of a major split between two major schools of thought. one of these schools maintained an emphasis on double descent models, such as the australian Kariera section system.The other maintained an emphasis on patrilineal descent and descent groups. In what must be one of the most influential nonpublications in the history of anthropology, lounsbury’s unpublished paper (that this author has never seen) is reportedly credited with linking roys’s (1940) interpretation of the coexistence of double descent with eggan’s (1934) interpretation of crosscousin marriage, resulting in the Kariera hypothesis (Coe 1965; Hage 2003; Thompson 1982).at the time, there was some confusion over the australian Kariera section system,but it was commonly viewed as consisting of a patrilineal descent group with two subgroups, a matrilineal descent group with two subgroups, and cross-cousin marriage. The two descent groups were thought to be moieties and the four subgroups reflected a quadripartite division of society (the actual system is described in Chapter 3).We now know that the Kariera system is purely patrilineal, that the “moieties” are a conceptual tool for the anthropologists trying to make sense of it, and that the Kariera did not practice cross-cousin marriage. But at the time, lounsbury’s interpretation led Coe (1965) to reexamine roy’s data, resulting in the interpretation of double descent, and, by extension, the interpretation of both ancient Maya Kinship studies / 17 patrilineal and matrilineal descent groups. Furthermore, Coe brought forth the observation that some 16th-century yucatec towns and precolumbian Maya centers have a quadripartite spatial division. The result was Coe’s interpretation that the ancient Maya elite had Kariera kinship:in terms of kin terminology, cross-cousin...