Patrilineal Descent and Postmarital Residence among the Yanomamo Essay

Patrilineal Descent and Postmarital Residence among the Yanomamo Village Growth and Division - Essay ExampleThe Yanomamo people of important Brazil are one of the oldest examples of the classic pre-Columbian forest footmen. The Yanomami comprise a society of hunter-agriculturists of the tropical rainforest of Northern Amazonia, whose contact with non-indigenous society everyplace the most part of their territory has been relatively recent. Their territory covers an area of approximately 192,000 km2, located on both sides of the border between Brazil and Venezuela, in the Orinoco-Amazon interfluvial region. They enunciate in various dialects but constitute No written language. The total population of the Yanomami in Brazil and Venezuela is today estimated to be around 26,000 people.The Yanomamo exist in small bands or tribes and reside in round communal huts. The Yanomami local groups are generally made up of a multifamily house in the grade of a cone or truncated cone called yan o or xapono, which are actually made up of individual living quarters or by colonys composed of rectangular-type houses .Each collective house or village considers itself an autonomous economic and political entity (kami theri yamaki, we co-residents) . The village is the basic sociopolitical unit and is occupied by several lengthy families, composed of nuclear family households. The founding nucleus of such a village consists of two intermarried pairs of brothers, their sisters or wives and their descendants. The two resulting logical arguments exchange their women, thus creating a number of affine alliances. As additional lineage groups join the village community and intermarry with members of the original lineage, political pressures and internal factionalism frequently lead to the splitting apart of the village and the establishment of a completely new community.These small tribes hold their men in high ranks. Chiefs are always men who are held responsible for the general kn owledge and safety of the groups women. The males are permitted to beat their wives if they feel the need to and can marry more than one woman at a time. This loose body-build of polygamy is a way of increasing the population of the tribe.Each village has its own chieftain (pata), and one pata is usually more influential than the others. Migliazza (1972 415) claims that the position of chief or headman is not really inherited, but is dependent on the chief having many living agnatic relatives and the ability to assert himself among them. There is some indication, however, that the office was at once inherited patrilineally from father to son or from elder brother to younger brother. During times of war, a man with experience in combat was oftentimes chosen to act as war chief, an office which was not hereditary and which became inactive when hostilities ceased. Marriage among the Yanoama serves to bind non-agnatically related groups of males to one another in a system of exchang es involving goods, services, and the promise of a reciprocal exchange of women at a later date. All Yanoama groups, as well as their Carib neighbors, have bifurcate unify kinship terminology for the first ascending generation, accompanied by Iroquoian cousin terminology. Patrilineal descent and agnatic relationships are considered more important than matrilineal relatives. Clans and moieties have apparently never existed among the Yanoama, but lineages have been mentioned by Chagnon (1971). In his analysis of the kinship system, Chagnon affords a central place to the local descent group-basically a lineage segment, consisting