An Unexplored Realm in the Heartland of the Southern Gulf ... - Famsi

1997:288). These changes in residency patterns, in turn, affected the development of
kinship systems. According to Widmer (2003), the shift to sedentism resulted in larger
family units that for the first time in human history became sufficiently large to permit
the establishment of an extended lineage. The leader of this corporate structure, which
included collateral kin, could differentially focus the group’s labor to develop an
oversupply of required resources. At the same time, the unilineal kin group provided a
built-in mechanism that promoted and facilitated the hereditary inheritance of social
positions and the proprietary rights to land and resources (Clark and Blake 1994; Widmer
2003). Thus, for this transition in social organization to have occurred, three sequential
elements needed to coalesce: changes in the demographic processes (sedentism) that led
to new kinship systems (extended family) whose labor resulted in excess food (surplus).
At the center of any migratory or sedentary society is the family. This is the entity
whether it be nuclear, extended, fictive, household, or kin group that is explicitly or
implicitly referenced by authors regardless of their approaches, terminologies, or models,
in their explanation of egalitarian or transegalitarian social inequality (Bender 1990;
Blanton 1995; Braun 1990; Brumfiel 1994; Earle 1991a; Feinman 1995; Hayden 1995b;
Junker 2001; Pauketat 1994; Pinto 1991; Sahlins 1968; Saitta and Keene 1990). Human
biological heritage dictates that initial social relationships were developed in the nuclear
family, and it is considered a social and economic unit that provides the teaching of
beliefs, habits, and techniques that are required for survival and adaptation to the
environment. It is where culture is learned (Ember and Ember 2003:342; Feder and Park
2001:152-154).
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