ramage

…group called by anthropologists a ramage, or a conical clan. This is a group with a myth of common descent, divided into ranked senior and junior lineages based on the seniority of older versus younger brother in the group genealogy. In support of this reconstruction is the statement that the…

…has been called the “conical clan” (for its hierarchical shape). It is a characteristic social organization of chiefdoms everywhere. Its capacity for waxing and waning, fusion and fission, has obvious advantages, especially when a brief makeshift political ordering of a very large horde is militarily necessary. But the large…

…known among anthropologists as the ramage, or conical clan, type, in which the whole society might be represented in the form of a multibranched tree. In such systems, a group’s ancestry is traceable back to the mythological past, and various lineages are ranked according to their relation to these distant…