On Developed Oldowan and Acheulian: Problems in Lithic Taxonomy

from the discussion of alliance in the preceding paragraph. Other misreadings are less understandable. Blust speaks (p. 242) of my "apparent belief that systems of marriage classes are confined to eastern Indonesia" and cites their existence in Borneo and Sumatra as well as on Ambrym, in the New Hebrides. But in suggesting diffusion, I spoke of Indonesia, not eastern Indonesia, which I had not regarded as a distinctive culture area. Of course I knew that Deacon had reported marriage classes on Ambrym; I also knew that Scheffler, eexamining the data and revisiting the area, had concluded that "there can be no doubt that the alleged existence of a 6-class system on Ambrym never had any basis in ethnographic fact" (1970:56). On the available evidence I still find diffusion of marriage classes within Indonesia plausible. As regards Blust's rejection of my suggestion that Dobuan yaia-na is derived from POC *qalawa, on the grounds that "*w does not disappear" in that language, I was postulating not the simple disappearance of *w, but the disappearance of the entire final syllable. That process does seem to occur in Dobuan and its close relatives, as in ? ase'wife' in such combinations as ? asemulia 'wife subsequent to the first', which I derive from PMP *qa(s)awa. However, I suspect that this point has become unimportant. In suggesting such an origin for yaia-na, I had forgotten that in a closely related language of Normanby Island, where FZ is yaya-, the word for MB is waha-, which I consider more likely to have been derived from *qalawa (again with loss of the final syllable). This language also contains lawafor a variety of affines (Schlesier 1970:61 ff.). To turn to a more important matter, Blust has trouble following what I say about consanguinity, and I have the same problem, especially when he notes (p. 242): "This is not to say that real consanguinity is overlooked. " But he is clear on one point: "In a unilineal system by definition only real consanguines through one parent are Ego's socially recognized kin. " He gives no source for his definition. To bolster my counterposition, I shall simply quote from several specialists in the study of kinship: "I suppose that we all now take it for granted that filiation-by contrast with descent-is universally bilateral" (Fortes 1953:33). "In societies where descent groupings are culturally relevant, bilateral kinship is also always recognized and always important" (Keesing 1975:22). And, more mildly: "In many societies which have unilineal descent groups (patrilineal or matrilineal) as the basic political units, individuals recognize their cognates as kin" (Fox 1967:51). I should be interested to know how many societies with unilineal kin groups fail to extend the social recognition of kinship bilaterally; in Oceania, I have heard such a situation suggested only for the Trobiands. In cultural terms-the only ones I was discussing-the ties of kinship extend bilaterally in most societies with unilineal kin groups, a fact that helps explain why it is misleading to refer, as Blust does, to a "unilineal society" (see Keesing 1976:246). Certainly the cultural extension of consanguinity is varied and complex, as in the Polynesian society with patrilineal descent groups in which children are thought o have no physical connection with the father but to be "of the same blood" as the mother (Monberg 1975:3638), but in noting this, I am not, as Blust accuses me of doing, mixing biological and cultural definitions. Blust's comments have only confirmed my belief that his ideas about the "social meaning of consanguinity" would be rejected in many societies with unilineal descent groups, not just those in which I have worked. As an addendum to a point he makes on p. 243, in Lakalai harua (from *qa[s]awa) is the word for "husband"; "wife" is rutu, of unknown derivation. This would be an example of a change that he says is "much less common" than a "wife" term derived from *qa[s]awa; he gives no actual cases of the Lakalai type.