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I .
THE DISTRIBUTION OF CULTURES 699
hand, is the rule in Malekula, Ambrym, South Raga, Paama, and
Epi.1 In North Ambrym we ï¬Ånd patrilineal and matrilineal
descent combined.’ Further, the majority of the islands of the
matrilineal area have a dual organization—that is, the people
are divided into two exogamous moieties, which are often further
subdivided into clans. This is true of the Banks Islands (with
the exception of Merlav), of Maewo, Omba, North Raga, and
North-West Santo,’ and such a matrilineal dual division is also
found in North Ambrym. There is also reason to believe that it
existed in times past in the Torres Islands, where it may now be
represented by Gameljat and Gameltemmata, two of the three
exogamous groups into which the natives are here divided,‘
and that the social structure of South-West Santo (and probably
of other parts of this island as well) is derived from a former
dual organization.“ Thus we may assume that the whole matri-
lineal area of the New Hebrides is or was characterized by the
division of society into two exogamous moieties.
Patrilineal descent, on the other hand, is accompanied by
local (village) exogamy, the whole community being divided into
a large number of local patrilineal groups. In North Ambrym
there is a dual organization with matrilineal descent,‘ but the
local groups are predominantly patrilineal, the result being
that they are composed of men of both moieties.
The distinction between the rnatrilineal area with the dual
organization on the one hand, and the patrilineal with local
excgamy on the other, I regard as fundamental.
If now we examine the dual organization as it exists in these
islands, we can observe two forms of it. The ï¬Årst, which I have
recorded from North Ambrym, is that in which it is intimately
associated with the division of society into six marriage sections,
and the regulation that a man must select as his wife a woman
who is the daughter's daughter of either his father's sister or of
' I Deacon, I927. PP. 329, 333, 335.
1 Ibid., p. 333. The article written by Pére Tattevin (1928), in which he
describes the kinship organization of South Raga, and tells of the patrilineal
local clans, which in some of the south-west villages are combined with a matri-
lineal dual organization, was published the year after Deacon's death.—C. H. W.
3 W. H. R. Rivers, 1914, vol. i, p. 20 ; R. H. Codrington, 1891, ppi 25~6;
A. B. Deacon, I929, p. 496 ; Codrington, pp. 26-7 ; Rivers, 1914, vol. i, p. 189 ;
Deacon, pp. 471, 496.
‘ W. H. R. Rivers, 1914, vol. i, p. I76; vol. ii, p. 71.
5 A. B. Deacon, 1929, p. 475.
' A. B. Deacon, I927, pp. 333-4i
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