The Tiv people live in Nigeria and Cameron as farmers who grow crops like yams, maize, and peanuts. Their traditional social structure involved living in stockaded villages or family compounds, with a patrilineal system and polygynous marriages where each wife had her own hut near the husband's reception hut. Men were responsible for farming tasks like clearing land while women did weeding, harvesting, cooking, and child rearing.

1. Tiv
Laura Bohannan
Shakespeare in the Bush

2. Key Terms
• Age grade
• Chiefdom
• Cultural Relativism
• Levirate
• Polygyny
• Socialization
• Assignments on time
• Quiz Friday

3. TIV
• Live in Nigeria and
Cameron
• 4th Largest Group in
Nigeria but only 2.5%
of its population
• In total 5-6 million

4. TIV Social Structure
• Before the British lived in stockaded villages of
perhaps 500 to 600 people.
• After established smaller compounds spread
more or less evenly over the land containing
from 12 to 120 people.
• Eighty three percent of the males in each
compound were members of the patrilineage
• Reception huts, each identified by the name of
a mature male member of the compound, are
arranged in a circle or an oval, their entrances
facing in toward the center
• Behind each reception hut is a sleeping hut for
each of that man s wives.
• Granaries of several sorts are associated with
sleeping huts.

5. Traditional Economy
• Subsistence farmers
– Yams
– Sweet potatoes;
– Maize for Beer
• Peanuts, peppers,
several types of cucurbit,
tomatoes, okra, and
cotton
• Greens, mushrooms,
seeds, leaves, and plants
to be used in sauces.
• Goats, sheep, chickens,
ducks, and guinea hens

6. Tiv Division of Labor
• Men
– clear land
– make mounds for planting yams
– run the legal, political, and
religious systems
– Inherit the land
• Women
– weeding
– Harvesting
– carry crops to the granaries and
storehouses in the compound.
– cook
– child rearing but traditionally had
help from older children, either
their own or those they
"borrowed" from kin.

7. Traditional Kinship
• Patrilineal
• Polygyny
• Every married woman has her
own hut
• The husband's reception hut is
surrounded by the huts of his
wives.
• Each married woman has her
own store of food; she cooks and
takes food to her husband every
day, and he shares it with all the
children present.
• What about the single men?