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regard themselves as comparative sociologists, but the assumption persisted that
anthropologists were primarily concerned with “primitive” peoples, and in practice
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evolutionary ways of thinking may often be discerned below the surface of functionalist
argument that represents itself as ahistorical. A stream of significant monographs and
comparative studies appeared in the 1930s and ’40s that described and classified the
social structures of what were termed tribal societies. In African Political Systems
(1940), Meyer Fortes and Edward Evans-Pritchard proposed a triadic classification of
African polities. Some African societies (e.g., the San) were organized into kin-based
bands. Others (e.g., the Nuer and the Tallensi) were federations of unilineal descent
groups, each of which was associated with a territorial segment. Finally, there were
territorially based states (e.g., those of the Tswana of southern Africa and the Kongo of
central Africa, or the emirates of northwestern Africa), in which kinship and descent
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regulated only domestic relationships. Kin-based bands lived by foraging, lineage-based
societies were often pastoralists, and the states combined agriculture, pastoralism, and
trade. In effect, this was a transformation of the evolutionist stages into a synchronic
classification of types. Though speculations about origins were discouraged, it was
apparent that the types could easily be rearranged in a chronological sequence from the
most primitive to the most sophisticated.
There were similar attempts to classify systems of kinship and marriage, the most
famous being that of the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. In 1949 he
presented a classification of marriage systems from diverse localities, again within the
framework of an implicit evolutionary series. The crucial evolutionary moment was the
introduction of the incest taboo, which obliged men to exchange their sisters and
daughters with other men in order to acquire wives for themselves and their sons. These
marriage exchanges in turn bound family groups together into societies. In societies
organized by what Lévi-Strauss termed “elementary systems” of kinship and marriage,
the key social units were exogamous descent groups. He represented the Australian
Aboriginals as the most fully realized example of an elementary system, while most of
the societies with complex kinship systems were to be found in the modern world, in
complex civilizations.

Q4. Explain the archaeological anthropology: as a branch of anthropology.

Ans. Archaeological anthropology has been derived from the broad field of Archaeology
(archaios means ancient and logia means study) which is concerned with the study of
the extinct cultures. Man, the central figure of anthropology existed long before the
development of written record. Therefore, archaeology is able to supplement
anthropology by recovering the remains of ancient men of bygone days along with the
material evidences of his culture.
Classical archaeology is a combination of fine arts, history and classics. It seeks the
antiquities of the past. So, it cannot be an exclusive domain of anthropologists, but

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