MIWOK MYSTERIES: THE QUESTION OF ASYMMETRIC PRESCRIPTIVE MARRIAGE IN ABORIGINAL NORTH AMERICA

Abstract

The Miwok of California stand out as the sole North American society classified by Rodney Needham (1962) as practicing asymmetric prescriptive marriage alliance. This essay reviews evidence from Gifford, the sole ethnographic source on Miwok marriage, and how later commentators (including Lévi-Strauss, Murdock, Kroeber, and Leach) employed Gifford’s findings, in order to assess how far and in what ways Needham (1962) may have been correct when he construed the Miwok as practicing prescriptive marriage. Consideration is also given to the Miwok system of symbolic classification, which very probably contributed to Needham’s interpretation. Concerning a major aspect of the work of one of the most prominent British anthropologists of the twentieth century, the objective is to illuminate a palpable mystery in the history of anthropological theories of kinship and marriage and to explore aspects of Needham’s approach to systems of affinal alliance that have yet to be subjected to a substantial critical treatment.