Marriage, a History (61 page)

28
Pasternak, Ember, and Ember,
Sex, Gender, and Kinship
(see chap. 1, n. 20); Friedl,
Women and Men;
Jane Collier,
Marriage and Inequality in Classless Societies
(see chap. 1, n. 25); Karen Brodkin Sacks, review of Collier,
American Anthropologist
92 (1990); Marshall Sahlins, “The Segmentary Lineage: An Organization of Predatory Expansion,”
American Anthropologist
63 (1961); Alan Barnard and Anthony Good,
Research Practices in the Study of Kinship
(see chap. 1, n. 9); Anderson,
“Chain Her by One Foot”;
Richard Sattler, “Muskogee and Cherokee Women’s Status,” in Laura Klein and Lillian Ackerman, eds.,
Women and Power in Native North America
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), p. 226; Christine Gailey,
Kinship to Kinship: Gender Hierarchy and State Formation in the Tongan Islands
(Austin: University of Texas, 1987), pp. 11-13. Jane Collier,
Marriage and Inequality in Classless Society
argues that the dependence of men on marriage among the Plains Indian groups she studied led them to restrict female autonomy and force women into marriage. But she admits that husbands and parents were usually unable to prevent a woman from leaving a husband, taking a lover, or running off with another man.

29
The most widely accepted outlines of such social change usually draw on Elman Service’s account of a historical transition from bands to tribes and from tribes to chiefdoms and states. This is often combined with Morton Fried’s categorization of social evolution as proceeding from egalitarian societies, where social status was acquired individually and did not confer power to command the labor or tribute of others, to ranked societies, which involved some inheritance of property and social status by leading lineages, and then to stratified societies, marked by strong, largely inherited differences in wealth and power. Allen Johnson and Timothy Earle believe that the earliest human societies were small collections of families that congregated together in camps or hamlets but periodically dispersed into smaller units in reaction to disputes within the camp or for the purpose of spreading out over more territory during certain times of the year. Only later in history, they argue, did a larger number of families form a more permanent association based on such shared interests as defense or food storage. Only later still, under very specific circumstances, did there emerge a regional polity, in which larger groups were incorporated under the leadership or control of a hereditary elite. Elman Service,
Primitive Social Organization
(New York: Random House, 1962) and
Origins of the State and Civilization
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1975); Morton Fried,
The Evolution of Political Society
(New York: Random House, 1967); Johnson and Earle,
The Evolution of Human Societies.
Many scholars argue that change did not evolve in a linear way, but that complex chiefdoms or empires periodically arose and then collapsed, creating a variety of hybrid political, ecological, and social forms. Susan Gregg,
Foragers and Farmers: Population Interaction and Agricultural Expansion in Prehistoric Europe
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Mark Cohen, “Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers: The Meaning of Cultural Complexity,” in Price and Brown,
Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers;
K. Ekholm and J. Friedman, “ ‘Capital’ Imperialism and Exploitation in Ancient World Systems,” in Andre Gunder Frank and Barry Gills,
The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand?
(New York: Routledge, 1991); Ernest Burch and Linda Ellana,
Key Issues in Hunter-Gatherer Research
(Oxford, U.K.: Berg, 1994); Price and Brown,
Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers
(see chap. 2, n. 12); Harry Lourandos, “Pleistocene Australia,” in Soffer, ed.,
The Pleistocene Old World;
Claude Meillasoux,
Maidens, Meal and Money: Capitalism and the Domestic Community
(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Lewis Binford, “Post-Pleistocene Adaptations,” in Stuart Struever, ed.,
Prehistoric Agriculture
(Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press, 1971); Kelly,
The Foraging Spectrum;
Crapo,
Cultural Anthropology;
Peter Mitchell, Royden Yates, and John Parkington, “At the Transition: The Archaeology of the Pleistocene-Holocene Boundary in Southern Africa,” in Lawrence Strauss et al.,
Humans at the End of the Ice Age: The Archaeology of the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition
(New York: Plenum Press, 1996).

30
Stephen Plog, “Social Dynamics in the Pueblo Southwest,” in Price and Feinman,
Foundations of Social Inequality,
pp. 196-97. For more on the processes described in this and the next paragraph, see Marie Louise Stig,
Gender Archaeology
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), p. 165; Michelle Hegman, “The Risks of Sharing and Sharing as Risk Reduction: Interhousehold Food Sharing in Egalitarian Societies,” in Susan Gregg, ed.,
Between Bands and States
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 1991); Christopher Tilley,
An Ethnography of the Neolithic;
Mithen, “The Mesolithic Age,” in Cunliffe,
Oxford Illustrated Prehistory of Euope;
Renfrew and Bahn,
Archaeology;
Grahame Clark and Stuart Piggott,
Prehistoric Societies
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972); John Robb, “Gender Contradictions, Moral Coalitions, and Inequality in Prehistoric Italy,”
Journal of European Archaeology
2 (1994); Richard Pearson, “Social Complexity in Chinese Coastal Neolithic Sites,”
Science
213 (1981); John Bintliff, “The Neolithic in Europe and Social Evolution,” in Bintliff, ed.,
European Social Evolution: Archaeological Perspectives
(London: University of Bradford, 1984); Russell Handsman, “Whose Art Was Found at Lepenski Vir: Gender Relations and Power in Archaeology,” in Gero and Conkey, eds.,
Engendering Archaeology;
Harry Lourandos, “Intensification and Australian Prehistory,” in Price and Brown,
Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers;
Brenda Kennedy,
Marriage Patterns in an Archaic Population: A Study of Skeletal Remains from Port au Choic, Newfoundland
(Ottawa: National Museums of Canada, 1981); Ian Hodder,
Symbols in Action
(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1982); R.W. Hutchinson,
Prehistoric Crete
(Baltimore: Penguin, 1962); Susan Pollock,
Ancient Mesopotamia: The Eden that Never Was
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

31
Dolores Jewsiewicki, “Lineage Mode of Production: Social Inequalities in Equatorial Africa,” in Donald Crummey and C. C. Steward, eds.
Modes of Production in Africa: The Precolonial Era
(Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1981); Suzanne Wemple,
Women in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister, 500-900
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981); Collier,
Marriage and Inequality in Classless Societies;
H. K. Schneider,
The Wahi Wanyaturu: Economics in an African Society,
(Chicago: Aldine, 1970); Schneider and Gough, eds.,
Matrilineal Kinship
(see chap. 2, n. 9); Jonathan Friedman and M. J. Rowlands, “Notes Towards an Epigenetic Model of the Evolution of ‘Civilization,’ ” in Friedman and Rowlands, eds.,
The Evolution of Social Systems
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978), pp. 207-13; Hayden, “Pathways to Power,” pp. 42-44; Kristian Kristiansen and Michael Rowlands,
Social Transformations in Archaeology: Global and Local Perspectives
(New York: Routledge, 1998); Colin Haselgrove, “Wealth, Prestige and Power: The Dynamics of Late Iron Age Political Centralisation in South-East England,” in Colin Renfrew and Stephen Shennan, eds.,
Ranking, Resource, and Exchange: Aspects of the Archaeology of Early European Society
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 81. I thank Brian Hayden for his helpful clarification of the role of bridewealth in putting junior men in debt to elders.

32
Studies of genetic material from the remains of prehistoric people show that many populations interbred much more widely than would be expected if marriage was occurring between the same communities and kin groups over and over again, as happens once marriage becomes a way of concentrating people and resources in a few linked kin groups and excluding others from participation in the exchange. Only over time did highly restrictive marriage systems develop. Archaeologist Kristian Kristiansen suggests that exogamous and endogamous forms of marriage alternated in Europe during the Neolithic Era and the Bronze Age. In times of expansion based on raiding or war, elites constructed marriage alliances with distant kingdoms, whereas during periods of territorial consolidation or intensification of agriculture, marriage was more likely to take place with neighbors and local kin, in order to concentrate and preserve property. Lawrence Straus, “The Last Glacial Maximum in Cantabrian Spain,” in Olga Soffer and Clive Gamble, eds.,
The World at 18,000 BC
(London: Unwin Hyman, 1990), vol. 1, p. 106; Janette Deacon, “Changes in the Archaeological Record in South Africa,” ibid., vol. 2, p. 183. John Bintliff, “Iron Age Europe in the Context of Social Evolution from the Bronze Age Through to Historic Times,” in Bintliff, ed.,
European Social Evolution;
Brenda Kennedy,
Marriage Patterns in an Archaic Population;
Strauss et al.,
Humans at the End of the Ice Age;
William Marquardt, “Complexity and Scale in the Study of Fisher-Gatherer-Hunters: An Example from the Eastern United States,” in Price and Brown,
Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers;
Stringer and Gamble,
In Search of the Neanderthals;
Whittle,
Europe in the Neolithic;
Silvana Tarli and Elena Repetto, “Sex Differences in Human Populations: Change Through Time,” in Mary Ellen Morbeck, Alison Galloway, and Adrienne Zihlman, eds.,
The Evolving Female
(see chap. 2, n. 3); Cohen and Bennett (1993), cited in Roosevelt, “Gender in Human Evolution”; Kristiansen,
Europe Before History.
The ultimate endogamous marriage is between brother and sister, a practice that was surprisingly common (and was considered sacred rather than sinful) among aristocrats and rulers in several ancient kingdoms, such as Egypt, Hawaii, and the Inca Empire in Peru. See Keith Hopkins, “Brother-Sister Marriage in Roman Egypt,”
Comparative Studies in Society and History
22 (1980); Roger Middleton, “Brother-Sister and Father-Daughter Marriage in Ancient Egypt,”
American Sociological Review
27 (1962); W. H. Davenport, “The Hawaiian ‘Cultural Revolution’: Some Political and Economic Considerations,”
American Anthropologist
71 (1969).

33
Roland Lardinois, in Burguière et al.,
Distant Worlds, Ancient Worlds.

34
Frank Alvarez-Pereyre and Florence Heymann, “The Hebrew Family Model,” ibid., p. 181.

35
Yan Thomas, “Fathers as Citizens of Rome,” ibid., pp. 230-32; Karen Lang, “Women in Ancient Literature,” in Bella Vivante, ed.,
Women’s Roles in Ancient Civilizations: A Reference Guide
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999), p. 44. Unlike European Christians, Romans and Greeks had no objection to adopting unrelated children or adults in order to perpetuate their family succession. But they were downright paranoid about the possibility that their
wives
might present them with children they hadn’t fathered. The difference was logical. An adopted heir had to relinquish all ties to his family of origin. But when a child was born into a family under false pretenses, there was always the danger that the mother might someday activate the child’s ties with the biological father or his family.

36
Joan Huber, “Comparative Gender Stratification,” in Janet Chafetz, ed.,
Handbook of the Sociology of Gender
(New York: Kluwer, 1999), pp. 70-76; Marvin Harris, “The Evolution of Human Gender Hierarchies,” in Barbara Miller, ed.,
Sex and Gender Hierarchies
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Claire Robertson and Iris Berger, “Introduction,” in Robertson and Berger, eds.,
Woman and Class in Africa
(New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1986), p. 5; Gerda Lerner,
The Creation of Patriarchy
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 83. On the variety of gender systems, see Peter Stearns,
Gender in World History
(New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 8-37. For a description of changing gender roles with the development of the plow and of warrior aristocracies in prehistoric Italy, see Robb, “Gender Contradictions.”

37
Hayden, “Pathways to Power,” 59; Nikki Keddie, “Introduction,” in Keddie and Baron, eds.,
Women in Middle Eastern History,
p. 2 (see chap. 1, n. 11); Howard Levy,
Chinese Foot Binding
(New York: W. Rawls, 1966).

38
Leila Ahmed,
Women and Gender in Islam
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 14-15; Karen Nemet-Nejat, “Women in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in Vivante,
Women’s Roles,
p. 91.

39
Peta Henderson, “Women in Mesopotamia,” unpublished paper, the Evergreen State Colllege, 1978; Stephanie Dalley,
Mari and Karana: Two Old Babylonian Cities
(Piscataway, New Jersey: Gorgias Press, 2002); Peter Stearns,
Gender in World History
(London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 9-18; Jerry Bentley and Herbert Ziegler,
Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past, vol. 1, From the Beginnings to 1500
(Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2000); Barbara Lesko, “Women of Ancient Egypt and Western Asia,” in Renate Bridenthal, Susan Stuard, and Merry Wiesner, eds.,
Becoming Visible: Women in European History,
3d ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), pp. 39-40.

40
Ebrey,
The Inner Quarters,
pp. 45, 50 (see chap. 1, n. 23).

41
Karen Sacks, “Engels Revisited: Women, the Organization of Production, and Private Property,” in Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, eds.,
Women, Culture, and Society
(Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1974). On the varying costs and benefits of marriage in different ancient states, see Barbara Lesko, “Women of Ancient Egypt and Western Asia,” in Bridenthal, Stuard, and Wiesner, eds.,
Becoming Visible.