[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

700 MALEKULA
his mother's brother (real or classiï¬Åcatory). The second is the
simple form of dual organization in which, apart from certain
prohibitions against the marriage of blood kin, a man may
take any woman of the opposite moiety for his bride. “In
Omba, North Raga, Maewo, the Banks Islands, and N0rth~West
Santo, this is accompanied by the approved or permitted
marriage of the maternal uncle's widow.‘ In North Raga, Omba,
and Santo there is reason to believe that marriage is also allowed
and even considered correct between a man and his mother's
brother's daughter’s daughter.“
The tact that the approved union with the widow oi
the maternal uncle would inevitably convert the ï¬Årst form of
the dual organization i.nto the second form, and that marriage
with the mother’s hrother’s daughter's daughter was actually
common, possibly even the rule, in North Raga, where this second
form is found, strongly suggests that the original type of dual
structure was that which co-existed with the six sections system,
and that later it became transformed in most islands to a simple
moiety organization as a result of the practice (which was
introduced or developed) of marrying the maternal uncle's widow.
Where this practice was not adopted, as in North Ambrym, there
the older form of dual structure persisted.
When we consider the social organization of South Ambrym,’
we ï¬Ånd a system of six marriage sections, as in the north of the
island, but harmonizing with this is the division of the people
into three patrilineal exogamous phratries. The organization of
South Ambrym is indeed exactly what would follow from a
substitution of (or gradual change into) patrilineal descent for
(or from) matrilineal, where society was established on the basis
of a six-section system with dual organization as it is in North
Ambrym. Thus there is every reason to believe that in Ambrym
there has been a change from dual organization with matrilineal
descent to patrilineal descent. (That the reverse change is
almost certainly not the one which took place, a little consideration
will, I think, show.)
Turning to the incidence of marriage with the widow of the
maternal uncle, this is found to be very general throughout the
‘ W. H. R. Rivers, 1914, vol, i, pp. 48, 196, 206; A, B. Deacon, 1927,
p. 327; and 1929, p. 472. .
= A. B. Deacon, 1921, p. 327; and 1929, p. 483.
=1 A. B. Deacon, 1927, pp. 329-333.
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