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INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY — PUBLICATION NO. 10 



and poking fingers in each other's eyes. Lovers 

 also spend hours in grooming one another: ex- 

 tracting lice from their hair or wood ticks from 

 their bodies, and eating them; removing worms 

 and spines from their skin; gluing feathers into 

 their hair; and covering their faces with uruku 

 (Bira orellana) paint. 



Since privacy is almost impossible to obtain 

 within the hut where as many as 50 hammocks 

 may be hung in the confined space of 500 square 

 feet, more intercourse takes place in the bush 

 than in the house. Relations also occur at night 

 in the hammock, but more rarely so. 



Generally speaking, great freedom is allowed in 

 matters of sex. A man is permitted to have 

 intercourse not only with his own wife or wives 

 but also with her (their) sisters, real and classi- 

 ficatory. Conversely, a woman is allowed to have 

 intercourse not only with her husband but also 

 with his brothers, real and classificatory, and 

 with the husbands and potential husbands of her 

 own and classificatory sisters. Thus apart from 

 one's real spouse, there may be as many as 8 or 10 

 potential spouses with whom one may have 

 relations. There is, moreover, no taboo on 

 relations between unmarried potential spouses, 

 provided the women have undergone the rites of 

 maturity. Virginity is not a virtue. Conse- 

 quently, unmarried adults rarely lack sexual 

 partners. In actual practice, relations between 

 a man and his own brothers' wives, and between 

 a woman and her own sisters' husbands, occur 

 frequently and without censure, but those with 

 potential spouses more distantly related occur 

 less often and are apt to result in quarrels or lead 

 to divorce. 



Food is one of the best lures for obtaining extra- 

 marital sex partners, and a man often uses game 

 as a means of seducing a potential wife. Failures 

 in this respect result not so much from a reluctance 

 on the part of a woman to yield to a potential 

 husband who will give her game, but more from 

 an unwillingness on the part of the man's own 

 wife or wives to part with any of the meat that 

 he has acquired, least of all to one of his potential 

 wives. In general, the wife supervises the distri- 

 bution of meat, so that if any part of her hus- 

 band's catch is missing she suspects him of 

 carrying on an affair on the outside, which is 

 grounds for dispute. Hence, instead of attempt- 



ing to distribute meat to a potential wife after 

 game has already been brought in from the forest, 

 a man may send in some small animal or a piece 

 of game to the woman tlirough an intermediary, 

 and thus reward her for the favors he has already 

 received or expects to receive in the future. 



Fights and quarrels over sex are common but 

 occur less often than fights over food. As has 

 been pointed out, such quarrels arise largely as a 

 result of too much attention to a potential spouse 

 to the neglect of the actual spouse; this is really 

 what adultery amounts to among the Siriono. 

 However much men are chided by their wives for 

 deceiving them, this seems to have little effect 

 on their behavior, for they are constantly on the 

 alert for a chance to approach a potential wife, or 

 to carry on an affair with a yukwdki (young girl) 

 who has passed through the rites of puberty. In 

 plural marriages, however, I rarely noted pro- 

 nounced jealousy between the wives, possibly 

 because most plural marriages are of the sororal 

 type. 



In all these relations, basic incest taboos must 

 be strictly observed. That is to say, it is strictly 

 forbidden to have intercourse with any member of 

 one's nuclear family, except one's spouse. Among 

 the Siriono these incest taboos are generalized to 

 include nonfamily members who are designated 

 by the same kinship terms as those used for mem- 

 bers of the nuclear family. Consequently, one 

 may not have relations with a parallel cousin, 

 with the child of a sibling of the same sex, with 

 the child of a parallel cousin of the same sex, with 

 a sister or parallel cousin of the mother, with 

 a brother or parallel cousin of the father, or with 

 the child of anyone whom one calls "potential 

 spouse." In addition to these taboos, which are 

 clearly reflected hi the kinship system, relations 

 with the following relatives are also regarded as 

 incestuous: Grandparent and grandchild, parent- 

 in-law and child-in-law, uncle and niece, aunt 

 and nephew, a woman and her mother's brother's 

 son, and a man and his father's sister's daughter. 

 Violations of incest taboos are believed to be 

 punished by the supernatural sanction of sickness 

 and death. However, I never heard of a case of 

 incest occurring among the Siriono, even in 

 mythology. The reason for this probably lies in 

 the fact that the sex drive is rarely frustrated to 



