Reading shelf

Kinship and marriage

Descent, alliance and the terminology systems behind the kinship diagrams on this site.

• Start hereJoseph Henrich (2021). The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous. Picador (paperback; first published 2020). Amazon (paperback)

  How the medieval Church's marriage rules broke up intensive kin groups in Europe, and what that did to psychology. Full of data on cousin marriage and kin intensity.

  Used in: Galton's problem, or why cultures are not independent data points · Transmission biases: the copying rules behind cultural change · Cross and parallel cousins, and why the difference matters · The six classic kinship systems on one family tree · Crow and Omaha kin terms, or why a cousin can be called uncle · Building a Dravidian kin vocabulary from a few starting terms

• ClassicClaude Lévi-Strauss (1969). The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Beacon Press (English edition; first published in French 1949). Amazon (paperback)

  The 1949 study of marriage exchange that set the terms for restricted and generalized exchange. The English edition prints André Weil's algebraic appendix on the Murngin rules.

  Used in: Section systems, and how the Kariera and Aranda rules work · André Weil and the first algebra of kinship · Cross and parallel cousins, and why the difference matters · The six classic kinship systems on one family tree · Abelian kinship systems, where the order of descent does not matter · How age gaps between spouses shape Aboriginal Australian marriage systems

• TextbookRobin Fox (1984). Kinship and Marriage: An Anthropological Perspective. Cambridge University Press (revised edition; first published 1967). Amazon (paperback)

  The standard short introduction to descent groups, alliance and marriage rules, written for students and still the clearest way into the classic debates.

  Used in: Section systems, and how the Kariera and Aranda rules work · André Weil and the first algebra of kinship · Cross and parallel cousins, and why the difference matters · How to draw a kinship diagram, step by step · The six classic kinship systems on one family tree · Abelian kinship systems, where the order of descent does not matter

Family history and DNA

For working out how two people are related on paper and in their DNA.

• Start hereBlaine T. Bettinger (2019). The Family Tree Guide to DNA Testing and Genetic Genealogy (second edition). Family Tree Books. Amazon (paperback)

  A widely used guide to DNA testing for family history: test types, shared centimorgans, and how to place a DNA match on the tree.

  Used in: Teaching kinship with a spreadsheet, one row per person · Pedigree collapse: why no one has a billion ancestors · The coefficient of relationship, worked out by hand · Cousin and relationship calculator · Pedigree collapse calculator

• Start hereNancy Hendrickson (2018). Unofficial Guide to Ancestry.com: How to Find Your Family History on the No. 1 Genealogy Website. Family Tree Books. Amazon (paperback)

  A practical walk through records search on Ancestry.com, from census pages to building and checking a tree.

  Used in: Teaching kinship with a spreadsheet, one row per person · How to draw a kinship diagram, step by step

• Start hereA. J. Jacobs (2018). It's All Relative: Adventures Up and Down the World's Family Tree. Simon & Schuster (paperback; first published 2017). Amazon (paperback)

  A journalist's tour of the world family tree, from pedigree collapse to the hunt for distant cousins. Light reading with the basics right.

  Used in: Pedigree collapse: why no one has a billion ancestors · How to draw a kinship diagram, step by step · Pedigree collapse calculator

• Test kitAncestryDNA (2026). AncestryDNA Genetic Ethnicity Test. Ancestry. Amazon (test kit)

  Autosomal DNA test with the largest match database of the big testing companies, which matters most when the goal is finding cousins.

  Used in: Cousin and relationship calculator

• Test kit23andMe (2026). 23andMe Ancestry Service DNA Test Kit. 23andMe. Amazon (test kit)

  Autosomal DNA test from 23andMe: a second, separate database for cousin matches.

  Used in: Cousin and relationship calculator

Social networks

From friendship layers to the mathematics of graphs.

• Start hereRobin Dunbar (2022). Friends: Understanding the Power of Our Most Important Relationships. Little, Brown (paperback; first published 2021). Amazon (paperback)

  Robin Dunbar on the layers of friendship (about 5, 15, 50 and 150 people) and the time each layer takes to keep up.

  Used in: What the evidence says about Dunbar's number

• Start hereNicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler (2011). Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. Little, Brown (paperback; first published 2009). Amazon (paperback)

  How behaviors and moods appear to spread through social networks, based on the Framingham Heart Study data. Worth reading alongside the later debate over those findings.

  Used in: What the evidence says about Dunbar's number · Network density and centrality, worked by hand · Kinship networks as channels, and why family loops matter

• Start hereAlbert-László Barabási (2014). Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life. Basic Books (first published 2002). Amazon (paperback)

  Scale-free networks and hubs for general readers, by the physicist behind the Barabási and Albert model of preferential attachment.

  Used in: Small worlds and six degrees: what the folders, the model and the emails showed · Kinship networks as channels, and why family loops matter

• Going furtherDuncan J. Watts (2003). Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. W. W. Norton. Amazon (paperback)

  The small-world model told by one of its two authors, with the history of network science up to the early 2000s.

  Used in: Small worlds and six degrees: what the folders, the model and the emails showed · Kinship networks as channels, and why family loops matter

• TextbookMark Newman (2018). Networks (second edition). Oxford University Press. Amazon (hardcover)

  The graduate textbook: network measures, models and algorithms with the mathematics in full.

  Used in: Small worlds and six degrees: what the folders, the model and the emails showed · Network density and centrality, worked by hand · Network density calculator

Cultural evolution

Culture as something learned, copied and changed over generations.

• Start hereJoseph Henrich (2016). The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. Princeton University Press. Amazon (paperback)

  Cultural learning as an engine of human evolution, argued through cases such as manioc processing and lost explorers who could not live off the land.

  Used in: Galton's problem, or why cultures are not independent data points · Transmission biases: the copying rules behind cultural change

• Going furtherPeter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd (2006). Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. University of Chicago Press (paperback; first published 2005). Amazon (paperback)

  The readable version of the dual inheritance theory its two authors built in the 1980s: culture as a second system of inheritance with its own biases.

  Used in: Galton's problem, or why cultures are not independent data points

Models and complexity

Why simple rules give complicated results, and how to reason with models.

• Start hereScott E. Page (2021). The Model Thinker: What You Need to Know to Make Data Work for You. Basic Books (paperback; first published 2018). Amazon (paperback)

  A tour of the core models of social science, from networks and diffusion to Markov processes and games, and the case for using several on one problem.

  Used in: Cultural consensus analysis, explained with five informants · Agent-based models in anthropology: growing societies from simple rules · Measuring shared ideas of identity with consensus analysis · Herders, farmers and land, and how a conflict model is built · What mathematics can and cannot settle about kinship · Learning to Labour as a simulation, and what a model of the lads leaves out

• Going furtherMelanie Mitchell (2011). Complexity: A Guided Tour. Oxford University Press (paperback; first published 2009). Amazon (paperback)

  Complex systems for general readers: cellular automata, genetic algorithms, networks, and why complexity is so hard to define.

  Used in: Agent-based models in anthropology: growing societies from simple rules · Herders, farmers and land, and how a conflict model is built · Learning to Labour as a simulation, and what a model of the lads leaves out

• ClassicThomas C. Schelling (2006). Micromotives and Macrobehavior. W. W. Norton (revised edition; first published 1978). Amazon (paperback)

  Short essays on how individual choices add up to patterns nobody intended, including the segregation model that agent-based modelers still start from.

  Used in: Agent-based models in anthropology: growing societies from simple rules · Herders, farmers and land, and how a conflict model is built · Learning to Labour as a simulation, and what a model of the lads leaves out

Number, pattern and symmetry

Counting across cultures and the group theory behind patterns and kinship algebras.

• Start hereClaudia Zaslavsky (1999). Africa Counts: Number and Pattern in African Cultures (third edition). Lawrence Hill Books. Amazon (paperback)

  Number words, finger counting, games and patterns across African societies; the classic survey that helped start ethnomathematics.

  Used in: Kinship, symmetry and what an analogy can prove

• Going furtherCaleb Everett (2019). Numbers and the Making of Us: Counting and the Course of Human Cultures. Harvard University Press (paperback; first published 2017). Amazon (paperback)

  A linguist's account of how number words shape what people count, drawing on fieldwork in Amazonia and on studies of languages with few number words.

• Going furtherIan Stewart (2008). Why Beauty Is Truth: A History of Symmetry. Basic Books (paperback; first published 2007). Amazon (paperback)

  The history of group theory, the mathematics behind the kinship algebras of Weil and White, told through the people who built it.

  Used in: Section systems, and how the Kariera and Aranda rules work · André Weil and the first algebra of kinship · Abelian kinship systems, where the order of descent does not matter · How age gaps between spouses shape Aboriginal Australian marriage systems · Closed models and open societies in Aboriginal Australian kinship · Nonabelian kinship systems, from the Aranda square to the quaternions

• Going furtherIan Stewart and Martin Golubitsky (2010). Fearful Symmetry: Is God a Geometer?. Dover (first published 1992). Amazon (paperback)

  Symmetry and symmetry breaking in patterns from crystals to animal markings, with more mathematics than most popular books.

  Used in: Kinship, symmetry and what an analogy can prove

Methods and statistics

Collecting data in the field and reading the numbers afterwards.

• Start hereCharles Wheelan (2014). Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data. W. W. Norton (paperback; first published 2013). Amazon (paperback)

  Statistics without the dread: sampling, regression and inference explained with everyday examples.

  Used in: Cultural consensus analysis, explained with five informants · Measuring shared ideas of identity with consensus analysis

• TextbookH. Russell Bernard (2017). Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (sixth edition). Rowman & Littlefield. Amazon (paperback)

  The field manual many anthropology methods courses use: sampling, interviewing, free lists, pile sorts and consensus analysis. A seventh edition appeared in 2026.

  Used in: Cultural consensus analysis, explained with five informants · Measuring shared ideas of identity with consensus analysis

Away from the page

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