Multiple Measures of Alyawarra Kinship

Abstract

A field experiment conducted in Central Australia in 1971–1972 explored differences between what Aborigines actually did andw hat they said they did when anthropologists interviewed them. Fieldwork entailed observing behavior and recording it in numerically coded forms; analysis entails extracting patterns computationally that would not appear in traditional ethnographic data. This article focuses on discrepancies between expected and observed with regard to descent, marriage, and kinship. First, it examines field methods and the dataset, then reviews analytical methods used to interpret the data. The alternative analytical methods serve to test “competing hypotheses” about the nature and operation of Alyawarra descent, marriage, and kinship. The cumulative result of using these diverse methods has been increasingly complex and subtle understandings of previously unknown aspects of Central Australian social organization. The data continue to repay increasingly sophisticated analyses thirty years after they were recorded, thus attesting to the success of the field experiment.