Hello,
working a lot in the field of Ethnoarchaeology I thought I'd describe a
Cretan shepherds' society as it was only a few years ago.
They are supposed to be very patriarchic, but on closer inspection there is
also another 'reality':
Cretan shepherds used to live (and still often do) a transhumant life,
leaving the high mountains in winter to stay with their herds near the sea
where it is green and mild. In summer they used to stay up on the mountains
for weeks a time, by this leaving the village virtually to the women. Those
women led a very independent life (except from sex in which they were
watching each other very closely, so the question of who the father was
didn't arise often and if was regulated in such a brutal manner that hardly
anybody would take the risk...). Women would rise the children alone, do the
work in their large gardens (small agriculture as Alexander described it)
and manage the whole life 'alone', meaning: always with the help of their
kinswomen. Clans still play a very important role in Cretan shepherds'
communities nowadays, marriages are still often arranged. But, as in a
rather matrilinear society, material goods are quite equally inherited. Each
family tries to build a house for each son and to buy the furniture
(everything movable in the house) for each daughter. As everybody knows that
someone without property might be treated badly by his/her spouse, families
try to give their children a good, and equal, start (because a badly treated
daughter of a good clan is a shame for all of them in a way...)
Whereas in central Crete (I don't know about the West) couples will live in
the groom's family after the marriage - a typically patriarchal effect - in
eastern Crete the couple would often still (? I suppose) live in the brides
family after marriage and girls seem to own more immovable property.
So we do see here a quite finely graded system of patriarchy-matriarchy
elements which may have slightly shifted over the ages, although I suppose
they might still reflect similarities with ancient conditions as they
shepherds' life hasn't changed much in 4000 years until about 100 to 50
years ago.
There is a very interesting anthropological book on the Cretan shepherds'
society of Mount Ida (although the author doesn't treat this subject) by
Michael Herzfeld, Poetics of Manhood, Princeton 1985. The village he treats
is the same a lot of my book (to appear in Athens soon: Where Zeus became a
Man. With Cretan Shepherds) is based, and it's amazing how much has changed
through the advent of 'civilization' in the past twenty-thirty years. Now
women are much more suppressed because their men come home every day (going
to work by pickup) and because they accompany them to the winter pastures,
too. So again I suppose Alexander was right in saying:
> Another way for patriarchal system to win is just progressive development
of traditional societies.<
So what we call civilization is paid by the freedom of women - a high price
that won't pay off, I suppose, because it looks as though they might be
braking free soon: one of those villages has a lack of women: they go to
school, then to town to learn more, and they never come back to be
suppressed. But it will probably take several generations until (if) a new
equilibrium can be found.
Greetings from Crete
Sabine