descent and inheritance.It is no longer to his own children—scattered among the various households in which he sojourned during his peripatetic liaisons—that a man can look for the continuity of his hearth and lands; rather, it is to his sisters’ children, who will be brought up where he himself was reared. Or, to look at the same situation from the perspective of the children, it is not their father to whom they can turn for security and inheritance; rather it is their mother’s brother.
Let me face one additional complication. Not all expansionist pre-state societies that engage in external warfare are matrilineally organized. In Africa, for example, pastoral societies such as the Nuer and the Massai engaged in external warfare but were patrilineal-patrilocal. These groups require separate consideration. Most nomadic or seminomadic pre-state pastoral societies are expansionist and extremely militaristic, but strongly patrilineal or patrilocal rather than matrilineal or matrilocal. The reason is that animals on the hoof rather than crops in the field are the pastoralists’ main source of subsistence and wealth. When pre-state pastoralists intensify production and, as a result of population pressure, invade the territories of their neighbors, the male combatants do not have to worry about what’s going on back home. Pastoralists usually go to war in order to lead their stock to better pasture, so “home” follows right along behind them. Hence the expansionist warfare of pre-state pastoral peoples is characterized not by seasonal long-distance raiding from a home base, as is the case among many agricultural matrilineal societies, but by the migration of whole communities—men, women, children, and livestock.
The discovery of the relationship between external warfare and the development of matrilineal institutions clears up a number of puzzles which have plagued anthropologistsfor over a hundred years. One can now see why patriarchy was never replaced by matriarchy, polygyny by polyandry, or bride-price by groom-price. Matriarchy is ruled out as long as males continue to monopolize the techniques and technology of physical violence. The reason residence with the mother’s brothers—avunculocality—is so common in matrilineal societies is that men refuse to let their sisters dominate the allocation of their joint maternal estate. The reason amitalocality does not exist is that women—the father’s sisters—are never able to exercise a degree of control over their paternal estate greater than that exercised by their brothers. The reason groom-price virtually does not occur is that husbands in matrilineal systems never occupy a position analogous to that of wives in patrilineal systems. They are not incorporated as dependents into the wife’s domestic group and they do not surrender control over their domestic affairs to their sisters; therefore, wives do not pay groom-price to their husband’s sisters in compensation for the loss of the man’s productive and reproductive services. And the reason that matrilineal societies are not polyandrous as often as they are polygynous is that sex continues to be used as a reward for male bravery. No battle-hardened head-hunter or scalp-taker is going to settle down to connubial bliss in the company of four or five of his boon companions under the tutelage of a single woman (although the sharing of concubines and gang rape are easily managed).
All of this is not to deny that the development of matrilineal institutions exerts a moderating influence on the severity of the male supremacist complex. For reasons associated with the explanation of the shift to external warfare, which I will discuss later on, matrilineality leads to a diminution of preferential femaleinfanticide and even to a reversal of preference for the sex of the first-born child. An Iroquois man, for example, wanted his sisters to have daughters so that his matrilineage would not die out, and where
Let me face one additional complication. Not all expansionist pre-state societies that engage in external warfare are matrilineally organized. In Africa, for example, pastoral societies such as the Nuer and the Massai engaged in external warfare but were patrilineal-patrilocal. These groups require separate consideration. Most nomadic or seminomadic pre-state pastoral societies are expansionist and extremely militaristic, but strongly patrilineal or patrilocal rather than matrilineal or matrilocal. The reason is that animals on the hoof rather than crops in the field are the pastoralists’ main source of subsistence and wealth. When pre-state pastoralists intensify production and, as a result of population pressure, invade the territories of their neighbors, the male combatants do not have to worry about what’s going on back home. Pastoralists usually go to war in order to lead their stock to better pasture, so “home” follows right along behind them. Hence the expansionist warfare of pre-state pastoral peoples is characterized not by seasonal long-distance raiding from a home base, as is the case among many agricultural matrilineal societies, but by the migration of whole communities—men, women, children, and livestock.
The discovery of the relationship between external warfare and the development of matrilineal institutions clears up a number of puzzles which have plagued anthropologistsfor over a hundred years. One can now see why patriarchy was never replaced by matriarchy, polygyny by polyandry, or bride-price by groom-price. Matriarchy is ruled out as long as males continue to monopolize the techniques and technology of physical violence. The reason residence with the mother’s brothers—avunculocality—is so common in matrilineal societies is that men refuse to let their sisters dominate the allocation of their joint maternal estate. The reason amitalocality does not exist is that women—the father’s sisters—are never able to exercise a degree of control over their paternal estate greater than that exercised by their brothers. The reason groom-price virtually does not occur is that husbands in matrilineal systems never occupy a position analogous to that of wives in patrilineal systems. They are not incorporated as dependents into the wife’s domestic group and they do not surrender control over their domestic affairs to their sisters; therefore, wives do not pay groom-price to their husband’s sisters in compensation for the loss of the man’s productive and reproductive services. And the reason that matrilineal societies are not polyandrous as often as they are polygynous is that sex continues to be used as a reward for male bravery. No battle-hardened head-hunter or scalp-taker is going to settle down to connubial bliss in the company of four or five of his boon companions under the tutelage of a single woman (although the sharing of concubines and gang rape are easily managed).
All of this is not to deny that the development of matrilineal institutions exerts a moderating influence on the severity of the male supremacist complex. For reasons associated with the explanation of the shift to external warfare, which I will discuss later on, matrilineality leads to a diminution of preferential femaleinfanticide and even to a reversal of preference for the sex of the first-born child. An Iroquois man, for example, wanted his sisters to have daughters so that his matrilineage would not die out, and where
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