Matrilineal descent is a kinship system in which lineage membership, group identity, and often property or land rights are traced through the mother's line, so that a child belongs to the same descent group as their mother rather than their father. In many matrilineal societies, formal authority over children rests less with the biological father than with the mother's brother, so that a boy typically comes under his maternal uncle's authority. The Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea, ethnographically documented by Bronisław Malinowski, are among anthropology's classic matrilineal case studies. Matrilineal descent is distinct from matriarchy (rule by women); most matrilineal societies are not matriarchies in terms of political power.
Facts
Descent RuleSourced to the subject's own accountLineage membership and group affiliation pass through the mother's line; formal authority over children commonly rests with the mother's brother rather than the biological father, and inheritance frequently follows the maternal line. 1 Typical RegionSourced to the subject's own accountDocumented among Melanesian peoples including the Trobriand Islanders, the Minangkabau of Indonesia, the Akan and Tuareg of Africa, the Khasi and Garo of India, the Mosuo of China, and numerous Native North American peoples including the Navajo, Hopi, Iroquois, and Cherokee. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
In matrilineal societies, formal authority over children commonly rests with the mother's brother rather than the biological father, which is exactly the residence pattern avunculocal residence names; the two commonly co-occur, though neither entails the other.
The Crow system is associated with matrilineal societies and collapses generational terms on the father's, non-matrilineal, side.
Named for and first described among the historically matrilineal Haudenosaunee, though the terminology pattern also occurs in patrilineal unilineal societies.
Matrilineal descent is frequently conflated with matriarchy in popular usage; anthropologists treat the two as conceptually distinct.
An increase in female subsistence contribution tends to produce both matrilocal residence and matrilineal descent together, though not by logical necessity.
Shaped By
Lévi-Strauss's The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949) analyzed descent and alliance rules, including matrilineal systems, as structural permutations of a limited set of underlying relations.
Sources
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