FAMILY TREES AND THEIR AFFINITIES - THE VISUAL IMPERATIVE OF THE GENEALOGICAL DIAGRAM

A substantial part of the study of kinship after Rivers involved visua lizing relationships in systematic, comparable form. For anthropologis ts, the genealogical diagram is a piece of graphic shorthand whose the oretical status is rarely considered. This article pursues the visual dimension of various sorts of European 'family trees' as examples of p recedents for the genealogical diagram. Rivers's transformation of ped igree into genealogy included tapping the diffuse currency of tree ima gery as a taxonomic device in certain domains of European culture. Dar win had already harnessed the language of pedigree to express phylogen y, which was given graphic expression by Haeckel. Calvinist charting o f Christ's earthly ancestry back to Adam expanded, in its turn, the ea rlier Trees of Jesse. The genealogical diagram charts kinship within e thnographic time, but owes its moral tone and visual clout to sacred, scientific and secular forerunners.