From: Alex Ferguson (abf@cs.ucc.ie)
Date: Thu 14 Sep 2000 - 18:35:53 EEST
John Hughes:
> If you're using the top down 'marriage as an exchange of women between clans
> to build alliances' model (and though it always has to be balanced with the
> view 'from the ground', it has a certain utility) then it is still good
> sense to educate and invest in your daughters. Why? Because if women are a
> commodity, they're a valuable commodity. The bridewealth for a lawspeaker or
> priestess is going to be much higher than for an uneducated sheep girl.
> Clans with a reputation for providing fair and skilled brides will be sought
> out as allies, and will attract same.
That last is true, but as commodities, they have distinct drawbacks!
It would be normal for her dowry to be at least of comparable size
to her bridewealth, so not much of a 'profit' is being made in cash
terms. Politically, it's certainly an asset to be 'in demand'.
> While the social and technological systems are very different, there may be
> Heortling analogies in rites to temples, pilgrimage paths, and their
> attendant ceremonies. If real world analogies hold, then even in a strongly
> patrilineal Heortling clan, many rights, rites and gifts will be passed
> along matrilineal lines.
I think this is definitely so, which is one reason I think that
such clans are often _not_ strictly exogamous, since matrilineal
and bilateral relationships are less 'politically messy' if they're
in any case local. Though admittedly, exogamy is generally not
exactly _very_ non-local, it's just churning the same, tired old
genetic material <g> through a slightly wider circle, and therefore
matrilineages can 'find their way back' to where they started off
quite easily with a generation or three.
One reason I assumed that endogamous marriage is commonplace in KoDP
(and that era generally) is that to start with, there are no tribes.
Therefore there's no 'natural' sources of wives (or E/u-husbands),
and every exogamous marriage is a special case legal wrangle unto
itself, which is still more or less still true if you marry outside
your tribe. (Somewhat ameliorated by city Rings, kingdoms, and
Lunar invasions (oops!) and such like new-fangled pieces of nonsense.)
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