Lunch Club Series | From kinship to household and back? Why kinship still needs anthropologists in the 21st century

Lunch Club provides affiliates of the Stanford Archaeology Center with a community-oriented forum for engagement with current issues in archaeology. On April 16, 2025, we will host Dr.Sabina Cveček from Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.
Abstract:
While many contemporary socio-cultural anthropologists might dispute the notion that ‘kinship is to anthropology what logic is to philosophy or nude is to art’ (Fox 1967: 10), archaeogenetic studies have sparked renewed interest in kinship within Eurasian archaeology. This resurgence is notably attributed to the development of new archaeogenetic methods, which have seemingly eliminated challenges in identifying residence, descent, and alliances from archaeological remains. However, explaining the social through the genetic lens more often than not occurs without consulting cross-cultural, socio-cultural anthropological insights. In this talk, I argue for the continued importance of collaboration between socio-cultural anthropologists and archaeologists, emphasizing the need for an interdisciplinary approach in addressing questions of gender, kinship, and relatedness in the past. The significance of this interdisciplinary collaboration will be explored through the lens of household archaeology and the project X-KIN: Exploring Patterns of Prehistoric Kinship from Socio-Cultural Anthropological Perspectives, highlighting the ongoing relevance of anthropological insights in understanding complex archaeological contexts.