Evidence and Anomalies from Australian and Pacific Sites

Abstract

While the social organisation of Aboriginal people drew Fison to a new area of research, kinship remained his principal focus. This chapter tracks Fison’s efforts to collect data from across the Australian continent and the Pacific Islands and his attempts to fit this evidence into Morgan’s schema. Fison’s new correspondents were largely missionaries whose experiences of indigenous congregations bolstered their religious expectations of the essential unity of humankind. They knew, however, that few in the secular world agreed with them. For this reason Fison’s kinship schedule was a welcome, if difficult, weapon in the battle for the recognition of human unity.