ABSTRACT
T O UNDERSTAND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF KINSHIP AND DESCENT, IN ASHANTI (AND AKAN generally) social structure, it is essential to bear in mind how they fit into the politico-jural system. As I have explained, the state was not a territorial polity in the determinate sense postulated by Morgan and Maine, either at the national level or at the level of the constituent chiefdoms.1 It was primarily a constellation of stools-a union of political communities bound to one another by chains of interlocked allegiances to eminent office within a framework of law and of fiscal, religious, and military organization, reinforced by a network of clanship, dynastic kinship, and marriage ties.
