This article tests hypotheses related to kinship terms, cousin marriage, and descent rules. Omaha, Crow, Eskimo, and Iroquois systems are each significantly associated with different kinship rules. Material from Northern Ghana is also considered.

This article examines direction of succession and inheritance as they relate to culture area and kinship system. Several hypotheses are presented and all are supported.

This paper examines the behavior between close kin and affines of the opposite sex. The authors "point to certain differences between continental areas that are related to specific social factors, including the structure of descent groups and the nature of marriage arrangements."

The goal of this paper is to inquire into the reasons behind the uneven distribution of adoption by linking it with the other broad differences between the major Eurasian and African societies.

This book is a comprehensive analysis of many aspects of social structure including family, clan, community, kinship terminology, social organization, regulation of sex, incest taboos, and sexual choice.

This chapter considers several forms of wealth transmission at marriage. The relationships between descent rules and incidence of bridewealth, dowry, and gift exchange are examined and several patterns emerge from empirical analysis.

This article discusses the relationship between plural marriage and women's position in the economy. Comparisons are made between this relationship in various locations and cultures. The article concludes that female farming is not sufficient as an explanation.

Using Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian phylogenetic comparative methods, this study aims to answer how cultural meanings and linguistic forms develop in kinship terminology focusing on sibling terminology. It tests sequential models of change of sibling terminologies among the Austronesian language family to reconstruct: the historical state and evolutionary change of relative age and relative sex; whether these distinctions have independent or dependent evolutionary trajectories; and whether opposite-sex distinctions might have developed when no such distinction previously existed. The results suggest that the trajectories are independent and that there was an initial absence of relative sex distinction. Other findings are that the transitions from absence to complex elaborated terminologies and the disruption of elaborate distinctions are very unusual.

This chapter explores and tests some propositions about matrilineal societies. Supplementary to that discussion, the author also explores the problems of method associated with the use of coded data on large samples of cultures.

This paper examines the distribution and diffusion of the seven patterns of sibling classifaction given by the author. The author then studies the association between descent and sibling terminology.