Ware launches three critiques in his comment, not all of which are based on my American Antiquity article. While constructive criticism can help to clarify arguments and viewpoints, I fear that a more productive discussion of the points on which Ware and I agree and even disagree gets lost in the truculent tone of his comment. In the brief space allowed, I will address each in turn with the hope of moving the conversation productively forward.

I thank Ware for shining additional light on the need for ontological and equity critiques to advance feminist science and for providing an opportunity to expand upon my earlier publication. Let me clarify what my 2016 article was and was not about. It aimed to amend certain omissions, erasures, and androcentrisms in the broad body of literature on Chacoan archaeology. My article was about neither house society models nor descent theory. It was about the ethnographic and legacy archaeological data that make women more visible than they had been in previous conceptions of Chacoan society, data that, when brought to light, demonstrate gender complementarity.

Matrilineality is an important aspect of many Puebloan societies; on that point, Ware and I agree. My article, however, focused on other aspects of gender in the ethnographic and archaeological record. I deferred presenting an in-depth discussion of the importance of Puebloan matrilineality, so I appreciate Ware highlighting it in his comment. However, I contend that “grounding” his avunculate hypothesis in matrilineality does not negate my critique of his Reference Ware2014 work as androcentric. Indeed, his use of the phrase “grounded in matrilineal theory” is illuminating, because the core avunculate thesis of Ware's book is centered on men. For Ware, avunculate sodalities are the “figure” and matrilineality is the “ground” they appear against. Similarly, Ware juxtaposes male “authority” to female “symbolism” in his comment with the implication that women had no authority. In contrast, my article explicitly highlighted male and female as complementary and inseparable.

Ware bases part of his critique on what he views as my inadequate reading of his 2014 monograph. He cites similarities between his work and that of Louise Lamphere (Reference Lamphere and Crown2000), faults my preference for engaging with Lamphere's work instead of his, and laments that he himself did not cite Lamphere's model, which was published 15 years prior to his. It is worth considering why this particular piece of Lamphere's scholarship, published in a volume on gender (Crown Reference Crown2000), escaped Ware's notice.

Ware also critiques aspects of my scholarship (Heitman Reference Heitman, Heitman and Plog2015) published outside the pages of American Antiquity. Contrary to Ware's assertion, house society models are not blind to issues of descent. Levi-Strauss's original formulation makes this clear; he defines house societies as

Subsequent re-theorizations (e.g., Carsten and Hugh-Jones Reference Carsten, Hugh-Jones, Carsten and Hugh-Jones1995) and archaeological applications (e.g., Beck Reference Beck and Beck2007; Gillespie Reference Gillespie, Joyce and Gillespie2000; Heitman Reference Heitman2011; Richards and Jones Reference Richards and Jones2016) also make this quite clear.

Lastly, I note that recent DNA findings from Chaco Canyon (Kennett et al. Reference Kennett, Plog, George, Culleton, Watson, Skoglund, Rohland, Mallick, Stewardson, Kistler, LeBlanc, Whiteley, Reich and Perry2017) do not, as Ware contends, explain “female symbolism” in Chacoan society, and his use of the word “symbolism” highlights the need, as Wylie (Reference Wylie1997) argued 20 years ago, to advance feminist science. The DNA analysis demonstrates that females were not simply symbols in Chacoan society, but were the gender through which kin group inheritance passed. Homologous ethnographic evidence from modern Pueblos would suggest that women may have been land owners and curators of ritual paraphernalia stored within houses (Heitman Reference Heitman2011:84–138). Based on their evidence for hereditary leadership through an elite matriline, Kennett and colleagues (Reference Kennett, Plog, George, Culleton, Watson, Skoglund, Rohland, Mallick, Stewardson, Kistler, LeBlanc, Whiteley, Reich and Perry2017:5) describe “matrilineal leaders as key protagonists in social history.” This seems like a productive avenue for future anthropological inquiry.