medieval germanic kindreds … and the ditmarsians

i’m going to figure out the english(/dutch) if it’s the last thing i do…. (~_^)

it’s been asked a few times around here: was there something special about the pre-christian germanics? something special that perhaps made them more open to the roman catholic church’s/kings’ & princes’ demands to outbreed (i.e. quit marrying their cousins — and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that they were marrying their cousins before the arrival of christianity — see here and here and here)?

one possible thing i have come across (and there could of course be others) is that kinship was reckoned bilaterally in pre-christian germanic populations — in other words, down through both the father’s and mother’s side of the family. related to this (i think — ah! and wikipedia backs me up on this) is that the form that “clannishness” took in germanic society was that of kindreds rather than actual clans (like you found in places like scotland or even today in parts of the balkans). as we saw in this previous post, a kindred is a set of relatives based around a core individual — so your kindred might include your parents, your siblings and their kids, your uncles and aunts on both sides and their kids (i.e. your cousins), your second cousins, all of your cousins’ kids, and so on (however far out your particular society happens to reckon kindreds). this is different from a clan which is based upon a specific ancestor in the past. a clan can continue to live on when any individual member dies, while a kindred is more ephemeral — when an individual dies, his kindred sorta … dissipates. as we’ve seen, anglo-saxon society was based around kindreds; so, too, were all of the germanic groups in pre-christian (and post-christian for differing lengths of time as we’ll see below) europe. these kindreds were called sippe.

now, i have been searching and searching … and searching! (even in german) … for more info on germanic kindreds. all i ever find are general statements by historians that the medieval germanic groups were based upon the sippe/kindred, blah, blah, blah, but no specifics on when or how this changed — germanic populations are not centered around the sippe today — or if there were any differences between the different germanic groups when it came to kindreds. pretty much of all the historians i have read generally refer back to just a handful of sources which usually include lorraine lancaster’s work on anglo-saxon kinship from 1958 (which i covered in these two posts here and here) and dame bertha phillpotts’ work on kindreds and clans which was published in 1913. in 2010, cambridge university press republished phillpotts’ classic, Kindred and Clan in the Middle Ages and After: A Study in the Sociology of the Teutonic Races, so — taken along with the fact that this is one of the sources everyone refers back to — i’m going to assume that phillpotts is the definitive work on germanic kindreds (unless someone out there can direct me to another source!).

so, i’ve been reading phillpotts.

dame phillpotts looked at the laws and wills and literature from seven medieval germanic societies — iceland, norway, sweden, denmark, north germany & holland, belgium & northern france, and england — to find out what role the kindreds played in these societies (especially wrt wergild payments/feuds) and when the kindreds faded out. i’ll probably talk about the former in some later post(s), but let’s see now what she had to say about the latter: what was the timing of when the importance of kindreds disappeared in each of these populations [pgs. 245-46]?:

“In Denmark, signs of the partial survival of the kindred are not wanting even at the dawn of the 17th century, in spite of the hostility of powerful kings (from 1200 onwards), and of the Protestant Church. In Schleswig the old customs defy legislation levelled at them by king, duke or *Landtag* for another century still. In Holstein, though it is probably that the participation of the kindreds in wergild disappeared sooner than in Schleswig, they yet left their mark on other institutions, and certain of their functions continue to be exercised until near the end of the 18th, and indeed even into the 19th century. This is especially, but not solely, true of Ditmarschen, within whose territory alone we find the fixed agnatic kindred which can be loosely termed clan. In Friesland the kindreds survive throughout the 15th century. In Hadeln and Bremen, and in the neighbourhood of Hamburg, they seem to have held out against adverse legislation until about the same date.

“In the more northerly parts of Central Germany we find occasional traces of their existence throughout the earlier Middle Ages. In southern Teutonic lands the last trace of a real solidarity so far discovered dates from the 13th century. In Holland and Belgium the kindreds remain active throughout the 15th century, and indeed into the 16th, and hardly less long in Picardy. In Neustria, too, there are traces of organized feuds and treaties between kindreds until far into the 14th century, and so also in Champagne. Normandy, on the other hand, yields no evidence. In England the activity of the kindreds seems reduced to a minimum already in the 7th and 8th centuries, when we first catch a glimpse of Anglo-Saxon institutions…. In Iceland we have seen good reason to believe that the solidarity of the kindred was a thing of the past by the time the emigrants landed on the shores of the new country. In Norway we have caught a glimpse of a gradual disintegration of the kindred, beginning perhaps as early as the 9th, and consummated by the end of the 13th century. In Sweden, on the other hand, everything points to the survival of kinship-solidarity throughout the 14th century [footnote: except in Gotland], and possibly for very much longer.”

i’ve mapped phillpotts’ outline indicating which century saw the end of kindreds in any given area. the purple square in northern germany is dithmarschen, which looks to be the medieval epicenter of the germanic kindred — it’s the place where, according to phillpotts, the kindred was the strongest — was really a patrilineal clan, in fact (kinda like in scotland — click on map for LARGER version):

phillpotts’ theory for why the kindred was so weak so early on in england, and not really present at all in iceland or normandy, was that this was due to the fact that these populations had migrated by sea to new lands. this could make sense. in migrating by sea in the early medieval period, you might not load up scores of boats and move with all of your extended kindred. you might just load up a couple of boats with you and your immediate family and maybe your brother and his immediate family. then, when you arrive in your new world, you don’t have a very extended kindred, so the kindred is not very important in your society (england, iceland, normandy).
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so what about those ditmarsians, eh? they’re kinda cool! they are right around the corner from the frisians who were also pretty clan-like, especially with lots of feuding. what they had in common, of course, was that the two groups resided in marshy areas which could not be manorialized (er, well, there was no point to manorialize those regions since you couldn’t really conduct agriculture there — not with medieval technology anyway). about the ditmarsians [pgs. 199-200]:

“The marshes of Friesland (in the Netherlands), as well as the northeastern corner of Germany and southern Denmark, formed another region of peasant liberty against seigneurial power. As already noted, in 1240 Bartholomaeus Anglicus remarked on the exceptional freedom of the inhabitants of Frisia, who appeared to live without lords. Just east of Frisia and slightly north along the North Sea coast, at Stedingen, peasants revolted against the archibishop of Bremen and the count of Oldenburg beginning in 1200. They refused to pay oppressive dues (tributa) and, according to the ‘Rasted Chronicle,’ sought to defend their ‘liberty’ against all claims of lordship. They were eventually subjugated but only with great difficulty. It required the proclamation of a crusade against these ‘heretics’ by Gregory IX to bring an end to their decades of successful resistance. The Stedingen peasants were decisively defeated at the Battle of Altenesch in 1234.

“Among the indirect beneficiaries of this war was a federation of independent peasant communities in another small marshy territory, Dithmarschen in Holstein. Lying slightly north of Stedingen, Dithmarschen was protected by the Danes against the ambitions of the counts of Holstein and others who had expanded in the wake of the Wendish Crusade of 1147. The Dithmarschen peasants abandoned the alliance with the Danes and so profited from the military setback suffered by Denmark’s King Waldemar in 1227 at the hands of the city of Lubeck, the counts of Holstein and Schwerin, and the archbishop of Bremen. Their autonomy under the lordship of the archbishop of Bremen was acknowledged in the aftermath of the Danish War. Dithmarschen supported the crusade against the Stedinger and found its nominal subordination to the archbisops convenient during the thirteenth century. The power of family clans grew at the expense of the lesser nobility, and the Dithmarschen peasants formed capable military forces that could defeat mounted knights on the swampy terrain of their homeland.

“The extended families of Dithmarschen established a confederation that would be defended against the claims of the counts of Schleswig and Holstein beginning in the early fourteenth century and the kings of Denmark in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In 1559 the Danes at last successfully invaded Dithmarschen, defeating the peasants and massacring the inhabitants of the capital, Meldorp, whereupon Dithmarschen was annexed to Denmark.

“Dithmarschen was, therefore, a free peasant community from the late thirteenth century until 1559, aware of itself as an anomaly and with a strong political cohesion born of military necessity. Dithmarschen litigated, signed treaties, and concluded agreements with Denmark, Holstein, and other neighboring powers. It also successfully defended itself in battle.”

three cheers for the ditmarsians! (^_^)
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so it seems as though the germanics had a comparatively “weak” kinship system before they ever encountered christianity. one historian, giorgio ausenda, has suggested that the pre-christian germanics practiced father’s brother’s daughter (fbd) marriage like the arabs today. i think this must be completely wrong. with fbd marriage you get strong, patrilineal (unilineal) clans/tribes, not kindreds based on bilateral descent. the germanics probably married maternal cousins of some sort, and maybe even relatively infrequently compared to a population like, say, the chinese. dunno. impossible to say at this point in time (who knows in the future, though … with thousands of samples of skeletal remains from the medieval and earlier periods in europe and elsewhere genetically analyzed for relatedness … an hbd chick can dream, can’t she?).

it may not have taken that much, then, either to persuade the germanics to adopt the cousin marriage bans and/or for the practice to really loosen the genetic ties in those societies. they might have been comparatively loose already. except in places like dithmarschen and that whole area of northern germany/southern denmark. what i, of course, want to know then is did those populations continue to marry cousins for longer than those where kindreds disappeared sooner? i shall endeavor to find out!

(p.s. – i totally have to get this book!)

previously: kinship in anglo-saxon society and kinship in anglo-saxon society ii

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kinship in anglo-saxon society ii

in the previous post on kinship in anglo-saxon society, we saw that, between ca. 600-1000 a.d., the anglo-saxons followed what’s known as the sudanese kinship naming system. in other words, like both the arabs and chinese today, the anglo-saxons had separate, distinct names for collateral kin including uncles, aunts, and cousins. as elsewhere in northwest europe, this naming system disappeared over the course of the medieval period to the point where, today, in english we no longer distinguish between father’s or mother’s brothers and so forth. this is probably related to the fact that the practice of (some degree of) cousin marriage amongst northwest europeans also disappeared over the course of the medieval period.

in this post, i want to look at the kindred in early medieval anglo-saxon society, and the fact that anglo-saxons reckoned their kinship bilaterally. again, i’ll be mostly working from lorraine lancaster’s two articles: Kinship in Anglo-Saxon Society I and Kinship in Anglo-Saxon Society II.
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kindreds and bilateral kinship in anglo-saxon society

based on the two facts that 1) in old english (anglo-saxon english) there was, apparently, no way to distinguish the various degrees of cousins — i.e. a first cousin vs. a first cousin twice-removed, for instance, or even a first cousin vs. a sixth cousin — but 2) at the same time extended family relationships were very important in anglo-saxon society — for instance in the matter of wergeld and blood feuds (more about those below) — lancaster concluded that the most important kinship group amongst the anglo-saxons was not, say, the patrilineal clan (as amongst the irish and the scots — think the o’sullivans or the macdonalds) or the tribe (as amongst the arabs — think the sauds), but the kindred [I - pgs. 237-38]:

“The general characteristics of the [kin naming] system suggest three points: firstly, our belief that the *mægd* ["family," "kinsmen," or "kindred"] need not have been an extensive group is borne out by the restriction of specific terms to a relatively small set of kin centered on Ego; secondly, the complete lack of specificity in terms for cousins of various degrees, which would be all-important in the operation of a wide-ranging bilateral system, suggests that these kin and the distinctions between them was not regularly of major significance. Lineal ascendants could be traced back to *sixta fæder,* and in fact were traced back further in the historical and mythical genealogies of the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.’ Nevertheless, the cousins who would share so remote and ancestor are not put in any particular linguistic category….”

and [II - pg. 372]:

“In Modern English society, the fact that surnames are inherited patrilineally is sometimes taken to indicate that the kinship system as a whole is a patrilineal one, although this is not so. In Anglo-Saxon society, there is no sign of what might be called patrinomial groups. Surnames did not regularly exist, although additional names could be given to a person to make his identification easier, a very reasonable thing when one considers the numbers of Ælfwines, Wulfrics, Æthelmaers, and so on that exited. Names of children appear to have been sometimes compounded from parents’ names, but there is no trace of reference to ‘the X’s', as a named kin group.

“More important, kin, named or not, were not organized into effective patrilineal descent groups, but, as we have seen, into Ego-centred bilateral kin groups….“

a kin group that is focused on ego — on yourself — is known as a kindred. from my friend robin fox [pgs. 169-170 -- see also]:

“[T]he stock of a kindred exists only in relation to a particular ego and it disappears when he dies. If a member of a cognatic lineage [like the macdonalds - h.chick] dies, the lineage still continues; when the focal ego of a kindred dies, then the stock are no more. The lineage then is defined relative to an ancestor who remains a fixed point of reference; the stocks of a kindred are defined relative to an ego….

“The kindred can be broadly defined as ‘ego’s relatives up to a certain fixed degree’. What matters is how this ‘degree’ is defined. It need not be defined cognatically (or ‘bilaterally’ as it is usually called in the literature)….

“[T]he real distinction is between the two foci — ego and ancestor: between *descent groups* and *personal groups*.”

so, the family members that might be considered as kindred by wasps in today’s anglo world probably include something like: nuclear family members, both paternal and maternal grandparents, both paternal and maternal uncles and aunts, and all paternal and maternal cousins — and, perhaps, their kids, too (your first cousins once-removed). ymmv. (for those of us from more “clannish” groups, we also keep track of our second cousins and even our second cousins once-removed. (~_^) ) this is not the same as primarily keeping track of, say, just all your paternal relatives out to sixth cousins.

many groups of people keep track of both their kindreds and their clan or tribe members. the two things are not mutually exclusive. but, based on the historical evidence (mainly wills) lancaster and others (including phillpotts) concluded that anglo-saxon society was based upon the kindred and not patrilineal — or even matrilineal — clans or tribes.
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furthermore (yes, there’s more!), anglo-saxon kinship and their kindreds were reckoned bilaterally. if you were an anglo-saxon, you would’ve traced your ancestors back along both your father’s and your mother’s line. (if wikipedia is to be believed, bilateral kinship groups arise in harsh environments and are beneficial since individuals have two sets of family upon which they can rely. that does seem as though it would fit northern europe.) the members of your kindred, too, came from both the paternal and maternal sides of your family (like in the anglo world today).

for example, from lancaster [II - pg. 370]:

“Kinsmen also had a duty to stand surety for Ego, or to support him with an oath. In II Athelstan I.3, we read that the kinsmen of a thief redeemed from prison by a fine were to stand surety that he would desist from thieving for ever. When an alleged thief had been slain, according to the same laws, the man who was demanding his wergild could come forward with three others, two from the paternal and one from the maternal kin and swear that their kinsman was innocent….”

so an anglo-saxon’s kinsmen — his kindred — came from both his paternal side of the family and his maternal side. but there was a bias towards the paternal side. we saw this, too, in the last post that there was a special term for a father’s brother but not a mother’s brother [I - pg. 237]:

“It is most significant that a term existed (*suhter-(ge)fæderan*) to refer to the relationship between a man and his father’s brother. There was no special term to refer to the corresponding relationship on Ego’s mother’s side.”

giorgio ausenda has also found this to have been the case in other pre-christian germanic groups (like the visigoths) — a bias in favor of the paternal side. based upon this, and the fact that the germanics were herders (lactase persistence!), ausenda concludes that the pre-christian germanics probably favored father’s brother’s daughter (fbd) marriage like other herders (such as the arabs).

i doubt it and think, rather, that, if they favored any particular form of cousin marriage at all, and it’s not certain that they did, the germanics probably favored maternal cousin marriage. the fact that their kinship naming system was the sudanese system is not a good indicator of fbd marriage since the chinese also use the sudanese system, and they do not approve of fbd marriage at all. quite the reverse, in fact. also, it makes no sense to have a bilateral kinship system to reckon the paternal and maternal sides of the family in an fbd marriage society since, in such a society, one’s maternal side of the family IS (often) one’s paternal side of the family! they are one and the same.

so, no, i don’t think that the anglo-saxons and other germanics favored fbd marriage. if anything, it was probably mbd or mzd marriage.
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so anglo-saxon society was based upon kindreds and not clans. i would still call them “clannish” though — but, perhaps, not quite as clannish as, say, their neighbors the medieval irish — or even today’s albanians. i would still call the anglo-saxons “clannish” — perhaps “mildly clannish” — since their society and its functioning was primarly based around one version of the extended family — the kindred. you as an individual would’ve had next to no identity in anglo-saxon society. your identity — including your legal identity (as seen above wrt sureties) — was based upon your kindred.

additionally, the whole wergeld system was alive and well throughout most of the anglo-saxon period — as were blood feuds (and if that’s not “clannish,” I don’t know what is!) [II - pgs. 367, 368, 370, 371]:

“A person’s position in a network of kinship relationship entails the performance of certain rights and duties as well as the carrying-out of less formal but likewise important expectations of behaviour. The rights and duties of Anglo-Saxon kinship represent that part of the system that has been most studied in the past, particularly the rights and duties connected with feud and wergild, because these are the most clearly described in the laws….

“What duties did a kin group owe to Ego? First and foremost, they owed him the duty of avenging his death, either by prosecuting a feud, or by exacting wergild payments. On the other hand, if Ego had killed or injured a man, he could expect some support from his kinsmen in helping him bear a feud or pay a wergild….

“[T]he kinsmen of a man injured or killed were entitled to compensation or wergild from the slayer and his kin or representatives….

“If compensation for deliberate harm done was not settled, a feud could be prosecuted. In feuding the legal solidarity of the kin group is demonstrated by the fact that one member of the slayer’s kin group is as good a victim for vengeance as the slayer himself. One could imagine a feud spreading among overlapping kin groups in a bilateral system. Edmund wished that a slayer should alone bear the feud (and thus stop it spreading from kin group to kin group [here you can see one reason why kings would want to get rid of clans - h.chick]) or, with the help of others, pay the wergild….”

anglo-saxons, then? still rather clannish even though they didn’t count themselves as members of (patrilineal) clans.

if i were to work up my own “hbd chick’s scale of clannishness” from one to ten, with today’s individualistic, nuclear-family-living (are they still?) english at “1″ and the very fbd-marrying, paternal tribal arabs (and afghanis and pakistanis) at “10″ — and let’s say the (historically) mbd-marrying, filial piety-focused chinese hovering somewhere around “5″ or “6″ — and the albanians at, maybe, “7″ or “8″ — i would put the anglo-saxons at maybe a “3″ or a “4″ — since only the kindreds seem to have been important and they had no clan lineages. that’s just a guesstimate on my part, though. i might decide to change the rankings depending upon what i learn about these different groups going forward. (^_^)
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interestingly, lancaster notes that, although they hadn’t disappeared completely, the importance of kindreds did wane towards the end of the period she looked at (up to 1066). she also notes that phillpotts noted that kindreds were less significant in england than on the continent (ah ha!) [II - pgs. 373, 375]:

“Phillpotts has effectively demonstrated the weakness of Anglo-Saxon kin groups compared with certain related systems on the continent….

“During the period they ["friends"] gained continued importance as oath-helpers. After the end of the tenth century, it was even permissible for a feud to be prosecuted or wergild claimed by a man’s associates or guild-brothers. If murder was done *within* the guild, kinsmen again played a part….”

THAT is definitely a change!

so, as i asked at the beginning of the previous post: “were they [the anglo-saxons] individualistic, civic-minded, living in nuclear family groups, not clannish or tribal, nonviolent, and liberally democratic? or, perhaps, predisposed to these things in some way?”

my answers are: no, i don’t know, no, no, no, and no. and, possibly.

i say “possibly” since, because the anglo-saxons most likely did not (i think) practice fbd marriage, they probably were not extremely inbred. that, and the facts that their society was based on bilateral kinship and kindreds, in other words not sooo strongly clannish, might’ve meant that a relatively slight amount of outbreeding would’ve pushed them out of the levels of clannishness that they did display.

that, perhaps … and the fact that the normans came along and shook everything up [see here for example]. (more on THAT anon!)
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previously: kinship in anglo-saxon society and english individualism and english individualism ii and english individualism iii and anglo-saxon mating patterns and more on anglo-saxon mating patterns

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kinship in anglo-saxon society

why are the english so special? why do they have such a strong sense of individualism (see here and here and here and here)? or are so civic-minded? why do they live in (absolute) nuclear families? why are they not clannish or tribal? why are they so nonviolent — and why did their levels of violence start to decrease so long ago? how come it was the english who pretty much invented liberal democracy?

i think a lot of these things have to do with england’s outbreeding project which began sometime in the early medieval period (see here and here), but could there have been something special about the pre-christian anglo-saxons (or danes — think the danelaw — see this comment and subsequent discussion)? were they individualistic, civic-minded, living in nuclear family groups, not clannish or tribal, nonviolent, and liberally democratic? or, perhaps, predisposed to these things in some way?

well, i can hardly answer all of those in just a blog post (and, to be honest, i don’t know the answer to most of them), but i’ll try to address a couple of them by taking a look at anglo-saxon kinship (the anglo-saxons after they got to england). i’ll be mostly working from lorraine lancaster’s two articles: Kinship in Anglo-Saxon Society I and Kinship in Anglo-Saxon Society II. from what i can make out, lancaster’s work on anglo-saxon kinship between ca. the 600s-1000s, which was published in 1958, is still considered to be the definitive one — anything i read about anglo-saxon society and/or kinship always refers back to her. so, let’s see what she had to say.
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kinship terms for collateral kin

in this previous post, we saw how kinship terms amongst germans on the continent became less precise over the course of the middle ages. the different terms for “father’s brother” and “mother’s brother” were collapsed into a single term for “uncle.” similarly, previously existing differentiating terms for the various cousins — “father’s brother’s daughter” or “mother’s brother’s daughter” — got collapsed into just “cousin.”

there are probably a lot of good reasons for having separate, distinct terms for all your family members, but one of the most important ones (i think) is to distinguish for yourself and everybody around you who can marry whom (see also julian pitt-rivers’ “The Kith and the Kin”). so, in societies where a certain form of cousin marriage is preferred — like father’s brother’s daughter (fbd) marriage amongst the arabs (see here) or mother’s brother’s daughter (mbd) marriage traditionally amongst the chinese (see here and here) — all of the cousins get specific names (this is known as the sudanese kinship form). (check out all the names for paternal and maternal relatives in the chinese kinship system!)

another way of naming kin is the system most common in the west, and the system we have in the english speaking world, and that is where we do not distinguish between different uncles or aunts or cousins. one’s cousin is one’s cousin, end of discussion. this is probably a result of the fact that, throughout the medieval period in europe, cousin marriage was prohibited by the church and frequently by secular authorities as well. since it became no longer necessary to distinguish one cousin from another — since ALL of them were off-limits to marry — they all eventually became known as simply “cousins” (or whatever term you happen use in your western european language). (this is known as the eskimo kinship form, btw — although why lewis h. morgan dubbed it that i don’t know since most of the eskimo groups i’ve read about don’t use this form!)

so what about the anglo-saxons in early medieval england? well, wikipedia tells us that they used the sudanese kinship system. and from lorraine lancaster [I - pg. 237]:

“There was a distinction drawn between ‘father’s brother’ and ‘mother’s brother’ which is not preserved in the modern English ‘uncle’ (<Latin *avunculus*). A father's brother was *fædera* and a mother's brother, *eam*…. The terms *nefa* and *genefa* seem to have been general ones, applicable to both a brother's and a sister's son, but *suhterga* and *geswiria* served to specify a brother's son and the term *swustorsunu* was, as its form suggests, only applicable to a sister's son.

“It is most significant that a term existed (*suhter-(ge)fæderan*) to refer to the relationship between a man and his father's brother. There was no special term to refer to the corresponding relationship on Ego's mother's side.

“The words *nift* and *nefena* appear to have applied to either a brother's or a sister's daughter, in the same manner as we use 'niece'. But the more specific terms *brodor-dohtor* (‘brother’s daughter’) and *sweostor-dohtor* (‘sister’s daughter’) were also used….

“*Sugterga*, which we have already noted in the context of brother’s son, could also express the relationship of those whose fathers were brothers, that is, parallel cousins on the father’s side. Another term for this relationship was *fæderan sunu* (i.e. ‘father’s brother’s son’). The corresponding relationship of parallel cousins on the mother’s side could also be specifically denoted: The word *sweor* (also used for ‘father-in-law’) represented a cousin german, probably on the mother’s side, while such a cousin could be more accurately described as *gesweostrenu bearn* (‘child of sisters’) or *moddrian sunu* (‘mother’s sister’s son’).“

this is very similar to the sort of cousin naming system that arabs today have — there aren’t unique words for “father’s brother’s son,” but the relationship is simply spelled out quite literally:

- father’s brother’s son = fæderan sunu = ibn ʿamm.

it’s likely, therefore, given the cousin naming system of the anglo-saxons — and the fact that the church offered dispensations to newly converted anglo-saxons who were married to their cousins, as well as the fact that many secular laws were passed in several of the anglo-saxon kingdoms banning cousin marriage (see here and here) — that cousin marriage was not uncommon amongst the pre-christian — and post-christian for a while! — anglo-saxons.

interestingly, lancaster points out that there weren’t any (many?) terms for more distant cousins in old english. there didn’t seem to be a way to say, for instance, “first cousin once-removed” amongst the anglo-saxons.

this leads into the idea of the anglo-saxon kindred (and their bilateral kinship reckoning) … which i’ll get into in my next post. stay tuned!

update 12/11: see also kinship in anglo-saxon society ii
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previously: english individualism and english individualism ii and english individualism iii and anglo-saxon mating patterns and more on anglo-saxon mating patterns

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the hgdp samples again

i’ve written before (here, here and here) about the hgdp samples and the fact that there is very little to no provenance info connected to them. the problem with this, afaics, is that it’s difficult to know whether or not the hgdp samples are truly representative, in all ways, of the populations from which they came.

i was particularly concerned initially about the french (and the japanese) hgdp samples — and then i got over that — but now i’m concerned about them again. here’s why:

the hgdp samples from france are described thusly:

“France – French/various regions (relatives) – This sample from various regions of France is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). This sample consists of unrelated individuals and was collected with proper informed consent.”

great!

hang on — which regions?

auvergne? where, in some villages in the eighteenth century, groups of families regularly inbred with one another? lorraine? which, in some areas, had consanguinity rates of up to 50% between 1810 and 1910? burgundy or brittany, both of which had reportedly higher cousin marriage rates in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries than other regions of france? or were the hgdp samples collected in places like central france which, historically, had much lower rates (in the range of 1-3.5%) of close marriages?

the thing is: we don’t know.

what we do know is that the hgdp sampling seems kinda biased towards unique little groups like basques and orcadians, sardinians and the adygei. which is understandable ’cause these are all interesting, unusual groups and there’s legitimate concern that their unique genomes might sorta disappear in our modern, outbreeding world, and it would be a shame to miss out on the chance to at least keep a record of all that human biodiversity.

but then i have to wonder how representative of the majority of french people are the french hgdp samples? do they truly represent “the french,” or did the samples come from some of those crazy little villages way up in the mountains? i dunno. and neither does anybody else (afaik).

and the reason i wonder is: if teh scientists are gonna do really awesome genetic studies to check for the relatedness between the members of different human populations — like runs of homozygosity (roh) studies or identity by descent (ibd) studies — i think they need to know if the samples they’re looking at are representative or not. do the results for “the french” in studies like this or this or this truly represent the average french, or do they represent some special sub-groups of mountain dwelling french?

in the most recent roh study i posted about, the “french” don’t appear to be much more in- or out-bred than orcadians or the basques, something which strikes me as odd. perhaps — perhaps — that’s because the french hgdp samples are not truly representative of the broader french population. perhaps. i don’t know. nor do the researchers.

rinse and repeat above discussion for the other samples, too.

previously: hgdp samples and relatedness and more on the hgdp samples and why i care about the hgdp samples and meanwhile, in france… and runs of homozygosity and inbreeding (and outbreeding) and ibd and historic mating patterns in europe and runs of homozygosity again

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why i care about the hgdp samples

if the hgdp samples are going to be used to look at the degrees of kinship within populations — which would be awesome! and which prof. harpending started to do recently — then care has to be taken to identify which sets of samples include lots of relatives.

if you’re gonna analyze a bunch of individuals’ genomes to ascertain the degree of kinship between them in order to determine the degree of kinship within their broader population, then you want to make sure you’ve got a random, representative sample from the population and not a bunch of relatives since, of course, a bunch of relatives will naturally have a high degree of kinship.

and if you found a high degree of kinship in a set of samples that included a bunch of relatives and didn’t know you were looking at a set of relatives, you might conclude that there must be a high degree of kinship across the broader population, too, but this might not be the case at all.

for example, take the hgdp samples from the pashtun and the kalash in pakistan. twenty-five genomes are available from each group, but according to rosenberg (see previous post), none of the individuals in the pashtun group were relatives whereas in the kalash group there likely are: one parent-offspring pair, one half-sibling pair (or an equivalent), and four pairs of cousins.

let’s say, then, that it was found that these two sets of samples — the pashtun and the kalash — had exactly the same degree of internal kinship between their members, genetically speaking. that would mean that the members of the broader pashtun population had the same kinship to one another as the several sets of relatives in the kalash population, since the pashtun genomes were random samples whereas the kalash ones were not. it might look like the two groups had the same, population-wide degree of kinship, but in reality that would not be what we had found.

of the 52 population samples in the hgdp (the south african bantus are counted as one group … even though they come from different ethnic groups … hmmmm …), rosenberg found that exactly half (26) include relatives.

the other problem i have with the hgdp samples involves the ones that were collected from immigrant groups here in the u.s.:

- han chinese: “This is a sample of Han Chinese living in the San Francisco, California.”
- japanese: “Collected by L.L. Cavalli-Sforza from Japanese-born individuals living in the San Francisco Bay area, and by K.K. Kidd and J. R. Kidd from Japanese-born individuals living in Connecticut.”
- cambodians: “Collected by K. Dumars from individuals born in Cambodia who are now living in Santa Ana, California.”

are these immigrants really representative of their native populations? are they first- or second- or fourth-generation americans? some immigrant groups start to outbreed in a new land, but others do just the opposite. what’s the case with these groups? how old were the individuals sampled (since in many populations inbreeding rates have gone down in the last 50 years or so)? do they all come from the same region in their native country (like guangdong province), or from all over? to give you an idea of some of the possible problems involved with these sets of samples, have a look at what i said about the japanese samples in the previous post.

and i still have a bug about which regions of france the french samples came from (see previous post). (~_^) it probably doesn’t matter that much, but it would’ve been nice to know how widespread the sampling was, i.e. how random and representative of the entire population of france are these samples? historically, different regions of france have had different inbreeding rates as can be seen in this map of the inbreeding coefficients for france, 1926-1945 [pg. 620] (my guess is this pattern goes back a long way, too — probably to the early medieval period and the introduction of manorialism in continental europe):

so, which regions the samples were drawn from in france might actually make a difference — especially depending upon how deeply one drills down into the question of relatedness. i wonder the same thing about many of the other samples, too, for instance the ones from russia, but we know that all those samples came from the vologda administrative region so we are at least aware that they may not be representive of all ethnic russians.

despite all these potential difficulties, i look forward to more genetic research into kinship and relatedness within populations — from prof. harpending or whomever! very cool stuff! (^_^)

previously: hgdp samples and relatedness and more on the hgdp samples

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more on the hgdp samples

first, see my previous post on this if you want to follow along.

in that post, i expressed some concerns over the french human genome diversity project (hgdp) samples since the ceph folks describe them as: French (various regions) relatives. i wondered both of the following: 1) how many and which “various regions,” since different regions of france have historically had different rates of inbreeding — haven’t managed to find out which “various regions” — and 2) how many and what sorts of relatives? i did find out that.

via some genetic wizardry, a noah rosenberg tried to work out if any of the individuals in any the hgdp samples were, in fact, relatives [see here]. to cut a long story short, rosenberg found it likely that two individuals in the french sample were siblings [see pg. 7 here - opens pdf], thus the “relatives” indicator on the ceph website. so, the entire french sample is NOT full of family members like i wondered in my last post — only two of the individuals sampled are likely to have been relatives.

i still think it would be useful to know from which regions the samples were drawn, but i guess i just have to live with not knowing for the meantime. (~_^) but now i feel more secure about professor harpending’s conclusion — that regarding the french: “from the viewpoint of kinship, one person is not very different from another person.”

however, now i feel unsure about the japanese samples! the hgdp samples for the japanese are described on ALFRED as:

“Collected by L.L. Cavalli-Sforza from Japanese-born individuals living in the San Francisco Bay area, and by K.K. Kidd and J. R. Kidd from Japanese-born individuals living in Connecticut.”

ack! well, how representative of japanese people in japan are these people? where did they come from? urban areas? rural areas? different areas? mostly the same areas? how old were they?

i ask all these questions because, historically, urban japanese have had lower inbreeding rates than rural japanese … and the inbreeding rates overall for japan dropped pretty sharply after wwii [see pgs. 4-5 here - opens pdf]. so if the samples include mostly young, urban japanese who recently moved to the u.s., well i wouldn’t be surprised if they look quite outbred. but if the samples include mostly older, rural japanese, i would be surprised if they looked outbred.

now i don’t have any confidence in the japanese hgdp samples — not for looking at kinship within the japanese population anyway. btw, rosenberg didn’t find any likely relatives in the japanese samples.
_____

i went through the ceph table of the hgdp samples and ALFRED and compiled a list of all the hgdp samples and if they 1) likely include any family members (“relatives” – based on rosenberg), and 2) where the samples were collected and from whom, if known. many of the samples don’t have any useful information on their provenance. for example, many of the ALFRED entries say that the samples were drawn from unrelated individuals, but rosenberg found that they, in fact, likely included relatives.

why do i care about any of this? i’ll explain that in another post. right now … coffee! (^_^)

**update: see why i care about the hgdp samples**
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the list:

- Central African Republic – Biaka Pygmy (relatives)
This sample is comprised of Biaka, living in the village of Bagandu, in the southwest corner of the Central African Republic (3.42N; 18E altitude approximately 500m). This group is probably an admixture of 3/4 “non-pygmy” African ancestry and 1/4 Mbuti ancestry. The transformed cell lines were established by Judith R. Kidd. The sources of this sample are L. Cavalli-Sforza (Stanford University) and K.K. Kidd, J.R. Kidd (Yale University).

- Democratic Rep of Congo – Mbuti Pygmy (relatives)
The sample is composed of Nilosaharan and Niger Kordofanian speaking Mbuti pygmies from the northeastern part of the Ituri Forest (northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo). It was collected by L.L. Cavalli-Sforza in 1986.

- Senegal – Mandenka (relatives)
This sample from the Central African Republic is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). This sample consists of unrelated individuals and was collected with proper informed consent.

- Nigeria – Yoruba (relatives)
Most of the Yoruba individuals in this sample are urban health care workers from Benin City, Nigeria, collected by Prof. Friday E. Okonofua and collaborators; cell lines established by Dr. J.R. Kidd.

- Namibia – San (relatives)
This sample from Namibia is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). This sample consists of unrelated individuals and was collected with proper informed consent.

- Kenya – Bantu NE (relatives)
This sample is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). This sample consists of unrelated individuals and was collected with proper informed consent.

- S. Africa – Bantu SE Pedi
- S. Africa – Bantu SE Sotho
- S. Africa – Bantu SE Tswana
- S. Africa – Bantu SE Zulu
- S. Africa – Bantu SW Herero
- S. Africa – Bantu SW Ovambo
These samples are part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). They include the following individuals: #993, 994, 1028, 1030, 1031, 1033, 1034, and 1035. These samples consist of unrelated Bantu speakers from southern Africa and were collected with proper informed consent.

- Algeria – Mozabite (relatives)
This sample from Algeria is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). This sample consists of unrelated individuals and was collected with proper informed consent.

- Israel (Negev) – Bedouin (relatives)
This sample from the Negev region of Israel is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). This sample consists of unrelated individuals and was collected with proper informed consent.

- Israel (Carmel) – Druze (relatives)
This sample is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). The Druze, a Moslem community from Northern Israel. Collected by B. Bonne-Tamir (Tel Aviv University) as part of the repository of samples of Israeli populations. This sample contains both related and unrelated individuals.

- Israel (Central) – Palestinian (relatives)
This sample from the central region of Israel is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). This sample consists of unrelated individuals and was collected with proper informed consent.

- Pakistan – Brahui
- Pakistan – Balochi (relatives)
- Pakistan – Hazara (relatives)
- Pakistan – Sindhi (relatives)
- Pakistan – Pathan
- Pakistan – Kalash (relatives)
- Pakistan – Burusho
These samples from Pakistan are part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). These samples consist of unrelated individuals and were collected with proper informed consent.

- Pakistan – Makrani
*no info found.*

- China – Han
This sample is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). This is a sample of Han Chinese living in the San Francisco, California. Collected by L. Cavalli-Sforza (Stanford University), K.K. Kidd, and J.R. Kidd.

- China – Tujia
- China – Yizu/Yi
- China – Miaozu/Miao
- China – Oroqen (relatives)
- China – Daur
- China – Mongola
- China – Hezhen
- China – Xibo
- China – Uygur
- China – Dai
- China – She
- China – Lahu (relatives)
- China – Naxi (relatives)
- China – Tu
These samples from China are part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). These samples consist of unrelated individuals and were collected with proper informed consent.

- Siberia – Yakut
This sample is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). Yakut-speaking individuals in the Yakut Autonomous Republic. Individuals sampled were living or were born along the river Lena in the area of Yakutsk and northward, roughly 129-130E, 62-64N. This sample was collected by E.L. Grigorenko.

- Japan – Japanese
This sample is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). Collected by L.L. Cavalli-Sforza from Japanese-born individuals living in the San Francisco Bay area, and by K.K. Kidd and J. R. Kidd from Japanese-born individuals living in Connecticut.

- Cambodia – Cambodian (relatives)
This sample is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). Collected by K. Dumars from individuals born in Cambodia who are now living in Santa Ana, California.

- France – French/various regions (relatives)
This sample form various regions of France is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). This sample consists of unrelated individuals and was collected with proper informed consent.

- France – Basque
This sample from France is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). This sample consists of unrelated individuals and was collected with proper informed consent.

- Italy – Sardinian
This sample from Italy is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). This sample consists of unrelated individuals and was collected with proper informed consent.

- Italy – from Bergamo
- Italy – Tuscany
*no info found.*

- Orkney Islands – Orcadian (relatives)
This sample from the Orkney Islands is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). This sample consists of unrelated individuals and was collected with proper informed consent.

- Russia Caucasus – Adygei
This sample is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). Adygei-speaking people near Krasnodar in the Russian republic of Adygei, which is in the southeastern section of the country (north of the Caucuses mountains). They are culturally and linguistically distinct from neighboring Russians. This sample was collected by E. Grigorenko (Yale University) V. Galkina, and M. Kadoshnikova (Bristol company, Russia).

- Russia – Russian
This sample is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). Sample collected by E. Grigorenko from rural communities of ethnic Russians living in the Vologda Administrative Region, about 400 km north of Moscow, roughly 59-61N, 39-41E.

- Mexico – Pima (relatives)
This sample is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). Collected from Pima living near the eastern border of the state of Sonora, Mexico. Collected by L.O. Shulz.

- Mexico – Maya (relatives)
This sample is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). This sample consists of Mayans who are Yucatec speakers from in the Xmaben village located in the Mexican state of Campeche in the central Yucatan peninsula. Blood and serum markers indicate European admixture to be about 10 % (K. Weiss, personal communication). Some evidence suggests that the area from which this sample was drawn served as a refuge for Maya people from across southern Mexico who fled to this more remote region during a series of revolts against the Spanish in the 19th and early 20th centuries. There are 53 transformed cell lines (106 chromosomes) established by Judith R. Kidd. The sources of this sample are K.K. Kidd and J.R. Kidd (Yale University).

- Colombia – Piapoco and Curripaco (relatives)
*no info found.*

- Brazil – Karitiana (relatives)
This sample is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). The sample was collected in the Karitiana village (Rondonia Province, Brazil) by F. Black. HLA haplotypes indicate that the Karitiana have no non-Amerindian admixture and are genetically distinct from other sampled populations in relative geographical proximity, such as the Surui.

- Brazil – Burui (relatives)
*no info found.*

previously: hgdp samples and relatedness

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hgdp samples and relatedness

**update 03/22: see follow up post — more on the hgdp samples — and just ignore what i said about the french samples below.**

**update 08/28: ignore what i said about ignoring what i said about the french samples. see here.**
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i had a post up back in january about some cool research that looked at what runs of homozygosity (roh) in samples from the human genome diversity project (hgdp) can tell us about the inbreeding or outbreeding of different human populations.

but i’ve been bothered by the thought of how the hgdp samples were gathered. as professor harpending said:

“No one knows, by the way, how sampling was carried out for this nor for any of the HGDP populations.”

ugh. the hgdp is really, really cool — but not having info on where the samples came from — like genealogical info — poses a problem if you want to use this data to look at recent inbreeding/outbreeding or, i think, even the sort of thought experiment that prof. harpening conducted a couple of weeks ago, however cool that was, too.

here’s an example of what i mean.

prof. harpending compared the relatedness or kinship of the individuals in a couple of sets of samples from the hgdp: the french, the japanese, and the druze. he found that the kinship of indviduals in both the french and japanese populations to their nearest “relatives” (i presume two individuals who had the most similar genomes?) is very similar. as he said: “from the viewpoint of kinship, one person is not very different from another person.” the druze, otoh, are very dissimilar and the good professor thinks that this is a population in which “opportunities for discord and clannishness are high as individuals able to discriminate kin would ally against the ‘others.’”

i’m not going to argue with that! the druze, like the arabs, regularly practice father’s brother’s daughter (fbd) marriage, the most incestuous form of cousin marriage around, so i’m not surprised that their genomes reflect this fact. (fbd marriage probably originated in the levant, so it could be that the people who are today known as the druze are the product of one of the longest running close-inbreeding projects in humans around.) amongst the druze, each extended-family or clan must’ve become, over time, it’s own little semi-isolated sub-group. like the arabs, i’d expect a lot of clannishness and infighting.

however, wrt to the french and japanese samples: the ceph folks do have some information on the hgdp samples, and one point of difference between the french and japanese samples is that the french samples are described as having been drawn from relatives whereas the japanese samples were not.

there are 29 french samples described as: French (various regions) relatives, and there are 31 japanese samples described as just Japanese, so i assume that means the japanese samples do not include relatives.

so what does French (various regions) relatives mean? i guess that the samples were drawn from different regions of france, but we don’t know which regions or how many. (which is too bad because different regions of france have, historically, had different inbreeding rates.) and how many relatives? who knows? i’m going to presume all 29 are not relatives from one family living scattered across the country, although i suppose that could’ve been the case. what seems more likely to me is that we’re looking at groups of samples from a number of different families, but how many? two, three, four … ten? again, who knows?

what difference would this make? well if the kinship in the french set of samples and the japanese set of samples look to be around the same, i.e. “one person is not very different from another,” BUT the french samples are from relatives and the japanese samples are not, then that would mean that the individuals in the broader french population must be even more like one another than the individuals in the broader japanese population since french family members have the same kinship to one another as japanese strangers do.

to put it more simply, comparing the french and japanese samples is like comparing apples and oranges because, if the ceph information is correct, the french samples include family members whereas the japanese ones do not.

the druze samples, too, are described as coming from relatives — again no info as to how many families/relatives — so the broader druze population should prove to be even more dissimilar to one another than these family members are.

i would love to see lots more studies done on inbreeding/outbreeding (and possible inclusive fitness-related behaviors) in human populations from a genetics p.o.v. — like what prof. harpending did in his recent post. but afaics, using the hgdp data is problematic. i look forward to when there are more whole genome sequences available out there WITH accompanying genealogical/pedigree information.

previously: runs of homozygosity and inbreeding (and outbreeding)

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the transition to manorialism

luke asked a while back: “I’m a little hazy on the transition to manorialism. Was it imposed by military force? Did it begin amidst the political anarchy at the end of the Roman empire?”

good questions. i’m (more than) a little hazy on the transition, too. and you know what? we’re not alone! so are the historians. (^_^)

i found what seems like a good summary of what is known about the shift from slave or kinship-based agricultural systems to manorialism in the early medieval period in “A Millennium of Family Change: Feudalism to Capitalism in Northwestern Europe.” i’m just gonna cut and paste some relevant sections from the book because it’s complicated … and really interesting. here goes! [pgs. 44-46, 50-53, 58-62]:

“The transition from Antiquity to feudalism remains an obscure chapter in European history, despite considerable advances in historical knowledge secured in the past three decades, primarily by means of the rapid expansion and technical refinement of archaeological fieldwork….

“Developments in the Late Roman Empire

“In its prime, the Roman Empire had been based on a combination of agricultural modes of production, with a slave labour force at its heart working the great estates of central and southern Italy and Sicily. This force had been built up in the Republican era by means of the massive importation of bondmen, acquired by taking prisoners in the course of military conquest and selectively enslaving peoples on the Empire’s expanding periphery. The encouragement of childbearing among the salves of rural Italy was by no means rare, but the population in bondage failed to reproduce itself. High mortality rates were a major cause of this dearth, but Roman slaves also manifested extraordinarily low fertility. Marriage between slaves was illegal, and so long as replacements were plentiful, masters had no strong incentive to foster enduring conjugal relations among common field slaves.

greg cochran was just talking about this over @west hunter.

“Since many more males than females were enslaved, there was a persistent shortage of the latter. The sex ratio of urban slaves has been estimated in one study as three males to every two females, and in another, as two males to every female. While this is a staggering imbalance, it is probable that the rural ratio was more severely skewed. Family formation among agricultural slaves was not unknown, but the sex ratio in itself meant that a majority of bondmen would not have had the opportunity to form enduring unions and create families. Through the widespread manumission of older slaves as their labour-power declined, masters sought to keep the dependency ratio low, evading the costs of keeping the elderly alive. Continuous restocking from abroad was necessary to maintain the labour force at strength. Italian slavery in the Republican era was an import-replacement regime by default, if not as a matter of conscious Senatorial policy. This does not imply that slave-breeding was rare, merely that it was insufficient, given very high death rates, to replace the servile labour force indigenously over time.

“After the territorial expansion of the Empire ceased (with Trajan’s conquest of Dacia in AD 106), the Roman legions were thrown increasingly on to the defensive…. As the supply of enslaved youth from the hinterlands ebbed, slave prices rose. In the face of persistent shortages, with no prospects of obtaining alternative sources, the aristocracy made a belated attempt to convert to a self-sustaining regime of indigenous reproduction. Successive emperors decreed subsidies and tax breaks for the owners of slave progeny: ‘Slave owners and jurists began, in the second century if not earlier, to respect … family relationship[s] and to see slave families as entities which should be left undisturbed insofar as possible.’ Owners were inititially exhorted to avoid breaking up families through sale or inheritance; by the late fourth century, it became illegal to do so. The overall demographic effect of this effort is unclear, but it was probably modest….

“[T]he traditional mode of production on the latifunda — ganged labour under intensive supervision, subsisting on rations and domiciled in barracks — proved increasingly unprofitable. Gradually, it was abandoned and estates were sectored in two. While the home farm continued to be worked by domestic slaves, field slaves were granted small plots from which they were expected to subsist while surrendering a portion of the crop. Accompanying the elevation in status which occurred with the ceding of direct access to the means of subsistence was the dissolution of slave barracks — the notorious ergastula. Servi casati (literally, hutted slaves) were able to form families, put their children to work on their own land and transfer allotments to them upon decease…. Yet the familial autonomy of the servi casati was extremely limited:

“‘Slaves fortunate enough to be given plots of their own were obliged to spend one out of every two or three days inside the dominial court doing whatever they were ordered to do; on those days they took their meals in the refectory and were thus reincorporated into the master’s family. Their women were obliged to perform communal labor with the other women of the estate. The master took children from their huts as needed to replenish the ranks of his full-time servants.’

“While never being recognized in Roman law, the domicile and familial rights of slaves gradually began to be conceded de facto on large estates, under the burgeoning influence of the Christian Church. When this bundle of rights became customary, the servi casati had achieved the status of serfs.

“Outside Italy and Spain, peasant cultivators possessing hereditary land were the mainstays of agriculture throughout the Roman Empire, while slaves were primarily employed as domestics in aristocratic households. Peasant families were engaged in a broad range of class relations, from freehold ownership to servile dependency. Across the full breadth of this spectrum, their position gradually deteriorated from the second century AD on; an increasing proportion of them were enserfed. In the last two centuries of the Western Empire, ex-slaves and tenant farmers gradually converged. ‘What difference can be understood between slave and adscripticii’ (peasants bound to the land), Justinian asked rhetorically in the sixth century, ‘when both are placed in their master’s power and he can manumit a slave and alienate an adscripticius with the land?’ In this blending, ‘the major question was that of domiciling: once genuine independence of the hut had been acquired [by ex-slaves], fusion with free coloni or tenants followed….’

“The Germanic Peoples in Transition

“By Caesar’s time, the Germanic federations had left their nomadic, pastoral roots far behind. Since their social formations were extremely varied, generalization is difficult, but archaeological evidence indicates that most had become lightly settled agriculturalists by the pre-Roman Iron Age (1200-700 BC). They lived in widely scattered farmsteads, hamlet clusters and small villages, ‘islands of light soils … in a green sea of woods and waste’ where they combined the raising of cattle, sheep and goats with the cultivation of barley, oats, corn and wheat. In pre-Roman times, theirs was an extensive agriculture organized around stock-raising; a form of semi-sedentary pastoralism wherein cereal crops appear to have played a secondary but indispensable role. They practised slash-and-burn agriculture using scratch ploughs on impermanent fields, lacking regular layouts, crop rotation and systematic soil restoration. But in the first four centuries AD, there was a major expansion of settlements beyond loess soils, field layouts became more regular, wood ploughs more substantial and sophisticated, capable of cutting deeper furrows on light clays and intermediate loams, and there are even indications at one site of primitive forms of soil restoration…. Soil restoration could not have been widespread, since archaeological evidence indicates shifting cultivation, long fallow, two-course cropping, and repeated rearrangement of huts and field boundaries, the mark of semi-permanent villages….

“What, then, of the kinship forms of the Germanic peoples? By the time the Sippe (the Germanic kindred network) appears in historical texts, it is already a structure in decline. In the barbarian successor states, the political functions of the kindred — providing for territorial defense, domestic security and dispute settlement — were beginning to be replaced by the dependency of peasants upon local landlords and the extension of the latter’s authority….

“In those barbarian successor states where manorialization succeeded in establishing the permanence of land in cultivation, family groups held land, not the Sippe….

“Before widespread manorialization and the emergence of a standardized family holding in the ninth and tenth centuries, partible traditions prevailed across most of Northwestern Europe: all sons were entitled to marry in, raise families and subsist from the land of their fathers. In Anglo-Saxon England, where the primogeniture privilege was already emerging, the first son acquired the parental home; continental traditions appear more even-handed. The fissiparous potential of partible customs was held in check by the larger kin group, whose elder leaders enforced a strong tradition of joint management of farmsteads between brothers. Co-parceny inheritance may well have involved the establishment of separate residences (as Thomas Charles-Edwards argues was the norm in Anglo-Saxon England), but it was unlikely to have entailed the division of the parental holding.

“The kindred group, whose membership was in a constant state of flux, probably did not exceed fifty households. Yet whenever they were densely settled in a district, the group had a definite presence there. This took the form of a domain (a villa or fundus), an extensive ensemble of ‘arable, vine and orchard, undivided pasture, forest and waste, of demense and dependent tenancies.’ With the intensifications of plough agriculture, the domain was internally subdivided and conjugal families became more sharply distinguished from the larger kindred; but the group none the less maintained its external boundaries and genealogical identity. Alienation of the kindred’s land to outsiders was generally prohibited, strangers migrating to new lands were expected to declare their kindred, and settlements bore the name of their reputed ancestral owners….

“The structure of landholding in the Roman West was deeply shaken by the barbarian takeovers, yet great estates persisted in England, Gaul and Germania. While many were comprised of dispersed small-scale holdings, most were at least partly concentrated and centrally administered….

“As the kindred ceased to be a sufficient basis of collective settlement, agricultural co-ordination and land management [because of, according to the author, 'the transition from scratch plough agriculture and impermanent settlement to heavier iron plough cultivation and fixed site development' - hbd chick], the resulting vacuum encouraged the mass commendation of communities of free cultivators into the thrall of the emergent seigneurial class. Within the landholding elite, a parallel shift from a ramified, ancestrally based kin ensemble to a more streamlined estate lineage may also have paved the way for the rise of the military retinue, cutting across ancient kin ties.

“Conventional wisdom tends to foster an exaggerated image of the kindred in terminal decline, of a dying institution overwhelmed by the inexorable and deeply antagonistic forces of lordship. In reality, ‘kinship remained immensely strong in daily life.’ Certainly, kin extension was truncated and realigned within the field of seigneurial jurisdiction; in the event of conflict between the two systems of loyalty, kinship was subordinated. But we should not overestimate their antagonism. Kin solidarity persisted throughout the feudal epoch as a profound and necessary complement to the class of bonds of loyalty and service…. If we envision a complete atrophy of kin bonds extending between domestic groups, ‘the conjugal family’ emerges from the early medieval mists standing on its own. Alan Macfarlane has painted such a picture for medieval England, but his argument has been widely criticized by historians. If the solitary nuclear family thesis is somewhat misleading for England, it is sharply at odds with evidence from the continent, where extended kin bonds were common in long-standing village communities.

“With the expansion and consolidation of manorial authority, a more intensive common-field agriculture was established in larger village settlements, with short strip furlongs in open fields, communally regulated crop rotation, seasonal grazing on the stubble, and deeper plough cultivation extending on to heavier soils. By the tenth century these general features had appeared along the Rhine, in Franconia, Hesse, Dijonnais, Artois and the Paris basin: ‘Seignorial lordship prevailed in all the common-field regions of Europe.’ Ancient settlements were reorganized and newly established ones were laid out in regular forms from their inception….”

previously: medieval manorialism and selection … again and medieval manoralism and the hajnal line and behind the hajnal line and english individualism ii

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