Skin Group - The Subsection System

The Subsection System

'Subsection system' is the technical term from anthropology for a social structure found in many Australian Aboriginal societies, particularly those in the centre and western half of Australia. Subsection systems divide all of society into a number of groups, each of which combines particular sets of kin. Each subsection is given a name that can be used to refer to individual members of that group. There are systems with two such groupings (these are known as 'moieties' in kinship studies), systems with four (sections), six and eight (subsection systems). Some language groups extend this by having distinct male and female forms, giving a total of sixteen skin names, for example the Pintupi (listed below) and Warlpiri. While membership in skin groups is ideally based on blood relations, Australian Aboriginal subsection systems are classificatory, meaning that even people who are not actual blood relations are assigned to a subsection. They are also universal, meaning that every member of the society is assigned a position in the system.

Subsection systems are found in Aboriginal societies across much of Central, Western and Northern Australia. On the basis of detailed analysis and comparison of the various subsection systems and their terminologies, and in particular the apparent prefix /j-/ for male and /n-/, for it has been identified as a social innovation originally from the Daly River region of the Northern Territory, which then spread rapidly southwards to other groups.

The subsection system is widely known in Central Australian Aboriginal English as a 'skin' system, 'skin' being a vernacular Aboriginal English term for 'subsection'.