a type of ethnic community or social organization in a preclass society. The fundamental characteristics of tribes are consanguinity and division into clans and phratries. Other characteristics include a common territory; economic communalism among tribesmen, which manifests itself in collective hunting and mutual aid; a single tribal language or dialect; tribal self-identification and self-naming; and tribal endogamy.
Tribes with a highly developed clan structure also practice tribal self-government through a tribal council and military and civil chieftains. Tribal cults and festivals are characteristic of this stage. The most widely accepted view is that tribes originated simultaneously with clans because clan exogamy presupposes permanent economic, cultural, and above all marital ties between at least two clans; some scholars believe that tribes developed somewhat later than clans. The Australian aborigines are an ethnographic example of the early stage of tribal development, while the North American Indians exemplify a later stage of development.
Tribes exist generally until the transition to a class society. The transition is preceded by the stratification of wealth, the rise of a tribal aristocracy, the expansion of the role of military chieftains, and the development of tribal alliances. Tribal vestiges may continue to exist in a class society and become integrated with the social relations characteristic of slaveholding, feudal, or capitalist societies. Examples of tribes that live in a class society are the Tuareg, Kurdish, Afghan, and nomadic Arab tribes.
L. A. FAINBERG
(Latin tribus). (1) In ancient Rome, a group of people corresponding to the ancient Greek phyle. According to tradition, Rome’s earliest populace consisted of three tribes: the Ramnes (Latins), the Tities (Sabines), and the Luceres (Etruscans). Each tribe originally comprised 100 clans; the number later grew to 300 clans. These tribes constituted the Roman people.
(2) In ancient Rome, a territorial and electoral district that had one vote in the Tribal Assembly (comitia tributa). According to tradition, these tribes were formed in the sixth century B.C. by Servius Tullius, who divided the Roman territory into four urban and 17 rural tribes. During the subsequent conquest of Italy, the number of tribes rose to 35.
a taxonomic category in the systematics of plants and animals, ranking below the subfamily and above the genus. Tribes unite closely related genera: for example, the tribe Triticeae comprises Agropyron (wheatgrass), Triticum (wheat), Sécale (rye), Hordeum (barley), and other related cereal genera. In bot any the Latin names of tribes end in -eae, for example, Nardeae and Oryzeae. In zoology the ending -ini is used, for example, Braconini. Large tribes are sometimes divided into subtribes (subtribus).