In the first half of this book we have looked at the composition of Fontelas' social hierarchy with respect to landholdings, social groups, and cooperative labour. The second half will now deal with household structure, marriage, and inheritance: do we also find aspects of differentiation and inequality in these areas of social life?

The following three chapters will deal with aspects of matrimony and patrimony in Fontelas. By ‘matrimony’ I mean the complex of elements defining the whole process of marriage: courtship, wedding ritual, postmarital residence, child-rearing, and the establishment of affinal ties. By ‘patrimony’ I mean firstly the overall sum of a specific individual's or household's material property: land, house, and movables (tools, furniture, and livestock). The second meaning implies the larger structures of the inheritance of property and the transmission of patrimony (primarily land) over the generations. No suggestion of emphasis respectively on women and men is intended by the two terms. Following the minute analysis of three casestudies in this chapter, Chapters 6 and 7 will afford some conclusions concerning this society's general orientation towards patrimony and descent and its extreme de-emphasis of marriage and conjugal ties.

It is my contention that a major structural tension exists in this community between these two complexes. While dominant strategies attempt to maintain a unified patrimony and a large labour group within the natal household for as long as possible, each occasion of matrimony threatens to disperse individuals and to divide that patrimony ultimately in the second and third generations.