ABSTRACT
The change from Nomadic to Sessile is only favourable to the Kinship phase in its early stages. As soon as agriculture develops and communities increase and trades differentiate themselves, the Clan or Sept begins to melt away before the growing framework of the State. After a certain stage of skill in agriculture has been attained, and a considerable area brought under cultivation, the superiority of this new Way of Life as a source of food to hunting and fishing becomes evident. The later Kinship phase is found among agricultural peoples who have not yet reached the stage people term “civilization”, that is, they have become habitually sedentary, but are organized in clans, and not on political or “State” lines. Among the Fijians, whose technical culture and progress are the highest in Melanesia, the women are excluded from agriculture and confined in the houses, and their treatment is severe and rough, often positively cruel.
