Elena K. Lincoln is a Mayan anthropologist. She is known for her contributions to the study of Mayan settlement patterns and society. Dr. Lincoln proposes that marriage patterns were highly systematized. She said that in the early 17th century in Yucatan and before, marriage between two kin groups could be predicted. Furthermore she argues marriage between different kin groups was meant to increase the bond between the two kin groups. This example can be compared to Victorian Britain and before, where families married relatives who were closely related. In Britain it was economically viable to keep the assets in the family, for the Maya it was essential to tighten the bond between people who were of different kin groups. She proposed that marriages could practically be predicted between kin groups in Mayan society, even up to the 17th century. This is very interesting, because it seems to draw off some of the former work of people including Sylvanus Morley and Gordon Willey, who I understand she studied under in the 1980s whilst working in Yucatan, and while changing some of their theories by proposing her own, modern studies such as those from Latin American Antiquity journal and journals emanating from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard.
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