Marriage is a very odd institution in Fontelas. The essence of this oddness lies in the overall weak role of matrimony in comparison with this society's far greater stress upon the elements of patrimony, or the inheritance and transmission of property at death. Given its ecological setting and the form of agriculture practiced, rigid limits must be set for the size of individual households and the overall population of the hamlet. As in the Swiss and Italian Alpine communities studied by Wolf and Cole (1974), Friedl (1974), and Netting (1979a), in Fontelas also severe restrictions are placed upon villagers' marriages in the interests of maintaining unified landholdings and households of manageable size. While the interests of the parents (preserving such landholdings intact) may in these cases conflict with those of the children (the assemblage of a viable household property of land, animals, and buildings through inheritance, marriage, and purchase), in the Northeast Portuguese case the conditions for constructing or accumulating the latter assemblage of goods are extremely confining. Common also to both the Alpine and highland Portuguese marriage systems is a severe limitation on the number of new households formed in each generation. Unlike many Mediterranean communities described in the ethnographic literature, this community does not place particular emphasis upon marriage or the conjugal tie. In fact, it does its best to prevent or postpone the marriages of most of its member individuals. Matrimony is systematically subordinated to the predominant power of patrimony.

In Chapter 51 have shown how three major social groups in Fontelas exhibit different patterns of marriage and inheritance.