Cognation, Endogamy, and Teknonymy: The Piaroa Example

Abstract

The ideal residence unit of the Piaroa, a horticultural people of the Orinoco Basin, is an endogamous cognatic kinship group. To maintain the consanguineal nature of the kinship group as a whole, individual relationships established as affinal must not be permanent to its structure. The teknonym, by transforming the "affine" relationship to that of "kin," recognizes the ephemeral nature of affinity and is a symbolic statement of the unity of the group and of the artificiality of distinctions within it.