Kinship is a most significant organizing principle of human grouping, the basic matter of social categories in archaeological and ethnographic societies, and an important concept universally. However, its significance has rarely been adequately incorporated within archaeology’s theoretical and interpretative practice. This article aims to not only show the potential of bringing kinship into social archaeology, but also argue that archaeology can make important contributions to wider social research. Grounded on prehistoric data, spanning from the 8th to the 4th millennium bc, and drawing on cross-cultural discussions, it explores how understandings and practices of kinship might have been constructed and enacted in the first farming communities through architecture, time, material products, burials, and rituals. In doing so, the article addresses key issues of common interest in archaeology and anthropology, inviting interdisciplinary dialogue.

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The prehistory of the Aegean, Balkans, and Carpathian Basin has changed dramatically in the last two decades. This review covers five aspects of these changes: ( a) the development of theoretical approaches, in which diversification from cultural archaeology has seen the spread of processual, postprocessual and later approaches; ( b) the acquisition of data, with the key major development being the proliferation of large-scale infrastructure projects; ( c) the synthesis of data, the most significant challenge being to make sense of the massive increase in paleo-environmental research, materials science, regional surveys, and site monographs; ( d ) thematic questions, whose very diversity underscores the discipline's growth in these regions; and ( e) emergent trends, such as the creation of new forms of synthesis at the local, regional, and interregional scales, the theorizing and differentiation of new ways of relating people, places, plants, and animals and objects, and continuing diversification in the application of scientific techniques. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Anthropology, Volume 49 is October 21, 2020. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

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