Property and Gender in Early Society
Anthropologist Vianna Muller suggests that the term 'barbarian chiefdom' most readily describes the societies of Western Europe which came into contact with the Roman Empire. She defines a barbarian chiefdom as a society at a
... level of socio-economic integration which is in the process of political amalgamation with similar units (i.e. with other small chiefdoms) both for self-defence against a state level society and for the purpose of exacting tribute from subject populations. The population is. therefore heterogeneous, being composed of smaller kin-based groups with differing dialects, histories and customs. The division of labour has differentiated beyond that of age and sex to include full-time craft specialists, priests, and traders. The emergent classes include nobles - from whom the political leaders are chosen -a commoner group, and slaves who are captives of war or their descendants. The technology is iron-based. Surpluses are consumed by non-producers and traded for commodities produced both internally and externally...such societies are militaristic and exploitative...'
It is not possible to outline the actual historical development of any tribal group in England, i.e. from its 'primitive' inceptions through into barbarian chiefdoms and then into state society. However, Muller has argued that we can assume the similarity of continental tribal groups in their late tribal and early barbarian periods based on similar customs such as blood-feud, wergild and bilateral kinship. The existence of similar levels of socio-economic integration has enabled anthropologists to generalise about societies cross culturally, and at different historical periods. Muller thus argues that it is possible to outline the hypothetical antecedents of barbarian chiefdoms and early states in England by using cross cultural data from different historical periods.4
Muller suggests that 'primitive' Britain was characterised by a productive-reproductive unity.5 In 'primitive' societies, contradictions between the ownership of the means of production and the distribution of products do not exist. Such societies have sufficient land to practise extensive, shifting agriculture. They are small-scale, kin based societies with an elementary development of
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the productive forces.6 Muller argues that "... we may assume the egalitarian nature of the early neolithic society...as every other similar socio-economic formation known to anthropologists is non-exploitative'.7
In an attempt to get an approximation of relations of production and reproduction in the primitive societies of Western Europe, Muller draws on aspects of fourteenth century Welsh social structure. By that time the society had undergone significant changes. A shift from hamlet and hillside settlement, with little surplus production, to settlements which were larger, more productive and which needed greater cooperation in cultivation had occurred, probably as a result of the adoption of the heavy plough and open field system of the Germanic tribes. Pressure from the English kingdoms and the English state had resulted in the amalgamation of clan groups into federations of chiefdoms. A quasi-feudal land tenure system existed in many areas. Nonetheless, Muller argues that in areas of Wales, the social structure had remained 'primitive' in many ways.
Within the Welsh gwely (a patrilineage with land as its resource base), every fourth generation the title of the land was passed down from the chief, (i.e. the founder), to his great grandsons. However, so as to ensure their personal maintenance, young women and young men, as lineage members, had access to resources, consisting of cattle and sheep and rights in grazing. Muller thus suggests that women were in a relatively equal position. Moreover, such rights of individual maintenance were vested in the larger social group of the gwely. At the ages of twelve and fourteen respectively, girls and boys ceased to be dependent upon the parental household. Muller argues that this precluded personal dependence of any one individual upon any other individual, with attendant relationships of superiority and subordination that would likely exist if rights of individual maintenance had been vested in a patriarchal head of a nuclear family.8 Thus, just as matrilineal and matrilocal rules are not necessarily synonymous with matriarchy, Muller indicates that the existence of patrilineal and patrilocal kin corporations are not necessarily indicative of patriarchy.
Even so, she notes that 'It is the reproduction of the group which contains a basic contradiction in many primitive societies, and the consequences of that contradiction fall either upon women or upon men, if the society has a virilocal or a matrilocal marriage rule... '9 The Welsh lineages were exogamous, and whilst children became members of their father's lineage, in line with other 'primitive' societies married women continued membership in their own lineage, with full rights and responsibilities.10 However, Muller indicates that tensions may arise as a result of the split between
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membership in one's natural group and residence in one's spouse's group.11
Indeed, Karen Sacks' analysis of patri-corporations allows us to grasp a sense of contradiction in gender relations. Sacks argues that the existence of a corporate owning group allows for a range of relationships, not all of which are sexually egalitarian.12 In corporate kin groups
... property is held by groups of kinspeople. Every individual has access to at least some productive property by virtue of being born into one of these kin-based corporations...members...have unequal access to their corporation's property.1'' Sisters and wives are two different productive relationships. In patrilineal and patrilocal situations, the former are owners and not producers, and the latter are producers and not owners. Yet every woman embodies these two different relationships. That the contrast exists stems from corporate control of productive means'4 ... the husband's corporation...controls the productivity of its wives...Yet every wife is also a sister, and as such has claim to productive means, to their fruits or to the labour of brothers wives.. .In a corporate mode of production, a woman's adult life cycle alternates between these two productive relationships...As a woman's children and those of her brothers grow up, both brother and sister become more involved as corporation decision-makers. A woman's change of status in her own group is parallelled by a shift in her relationship to her husband's corporation. The latter shift is from wife to mother (of adult children)...married women...with age become controllers of labour and productive means - as sisters who control brothers' children's lineage affairs... (sisters also. ..have a claim on a brother's products or labour).. .and as mothers who control their own children's productive means. And noting a ...delayed claim on one's own lineage...sisters have a claim on a brother's products or labour.15
At this point it is also important to note as Muller does, that The household - roughly synonymous with parents and children, i.e. the nuclear family - had always been the basic production-consumption unit cooperating with other like units.'16 The hide/manse, denoting the land needed to support a nuclear family was widespread in Indo-European society, and was probably of Celtic and Germanic origin. In Irish society for example, the equivalent of the hide was the land of one kinsman. Each kinsman set up house independently. A single farm supported one man, his wife or wives (the legality of polygamy complicated the domestic pattern) and their children. However, farming was undertaken on a cooperative basis, and the kindred group within which inheritance then operated was the four generation agnatic lineage, i.e. one wider than that of the nuclear family.17
It has already been suggested that gender relations within corporate kin groups were likely contradictory. Then consider the delineation of the nuclear family. It might be possible to discern some of the implications of this if we consider the meaning of the hide in Anglo-Saxon England. By the seventh century the hide denoted the land of a normal freeman. According to King Wihtred, this freeman,
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was both husband and head of the family,18 and, as we shall see, might also achieve the status of lord.
Sacks suggests that the confusion about the position of women in pre-feudal Europe and the contradictory data on women's place could derive from women having contradictory sister and wife relations of production.19 Of relevance here is Muller's discussion of the strong public role of barbarian women. She points out for example that war was not the exclusive affair of men or a professional army. At the same time the division of labour in all spheres was fairly rudimentary. It is likely that such factors contributed to '...the continuing high prestige and participation of women in every aspect of social life...contemporary observers report that wives fought alongside their husbands in numerous campaigns...similar reports were made about the Scandinavian women who migrated to Great Britain in the ninth century.'20 Similarly, Christine Fell has argued that there may be archaeological support for the Norse literary image of the warrior woman.21 According to Tacitus there was no custom of brideprice, i.e. goods given by the husband to the wife's relatives to cement the marriage. However, polygamy - a mark of social prestige for men controlling surpluses - did occur among the nobility occasionally.22 Although Tacitus suggests that the social position of Central and Northern European women was higher than that of women in the classical patriarchies of the Mediterranean world, he suggests it was below that of men.23
By the time of Tacitus (A.D. 98), the Germanic social structure was far from pristine. This is evident if we consider the nature of Germanic society as reported by Ceasar (51 B.C.). Although the acquisition of cattle had introduced an element of stratification within the society, the periodic redistribution of land between the kindred worked against the emergence of significant differences of wealth. However, by the end of the first century A. D., trade in luxury commodities, with the Romans in particular, had led to increasing internal stratification within the Germanic tribes. Although not privately owned, land was no longer worked collectively, and was distributed according to social standing. An hereditary aristocracy made up a permanent council, exercising strategic power, but its proposals could be rejected by an assembly of warriors. Elective chiefs above the council came from dynastic quasi-royal lineages. Patron-client relations were emerging within the tribes for the purposes of warfare. The military leaders and their retinues were divorced from agricultural production. Indeed patron-client relations became the basis for permanent class divisions.24
Historically and cross culturally patron-client relations have been significant in the breakdown of kinship relations within tribal society, and the emergence of feudalism.25 Muller indicates that patron-client