ABSTRACT
The Tallensi of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast furnish data of special interest for the study of comparative social structure among the peoples of West Africa. Large as the ethnographic literature on West Africa is, it is singularly lacking in analytical data concerning social structure. The special interest of the Tallensi lies in their exceptionally clear-cut lineage system and in the all-embracing sweep it has in their social system. The whole of Tale society is built up round the lineage system. It is the skeleton of their social structure, the bony framework which shapes their body politic; it guides their economic life and moulds their religious ideas and values. A Tale lineage always functions as a system in which the behaviour of any part is regulated by its relationship to the whole, and the behaviour of the whole is determined by its component parts and the relations between them.
