ABSTRACT
The Tiv are a semi-Bantu tribe of subsistence farmers living on both sides of the Benue River in northern Nigeria, some 150 miles from its confluence with the Niger. Tiv organize themselves into what is called, in anthropological English, a lineage system. An analytical system is a systematization of ethnographic fact for purposes of analysis. The problem which faces any ethnographer writing about 'law' is twofold. First, he must report accurately the ideas and institutions of the people he has studied, in a language (English) in which most of the words and concepts of social control have been pre-empted by jurists and given precise and technical meanings. That is the translation problem. Secondly, he must report his material in such a way as to illuminate the work of his predecessors and his colleagues. Seeing his work and the ideas of his people in relation to a body of knowledge already in existence might be called the theoretical or comparative problem.
