Kinship in Ancient Athens: An Anthropological Analysis
S. C. Humphreys
Abstract
The book covers Athenian kinship from Drakon and Solon to Menander (with some references to later developments). It uses a wide range of sources: epigraphic, literary/forensic, and archaeological. It provides an ethnographic ‘thick description’ of Athenians’ interaction with their kin in all contexts: legal relations (adoption, guardianship, marriage, inheritance, disputes in and out of court); economic interaction (property, economic independence/dependence of sons in relation to fathers); training in specialist skills (doctors, actors, artists), loans, guarantees, etc.; rituals (naming, rite ... More
The book covers Athenian kinship from Drakon and Solon to Menander (with some references to later developments). It uses a wide range of sources: epigraphic, literary/forensic, and archaeological. It provides an ethnographic ‘thick description’ of Athenians’ interaction with their kin in all contexts: legal relations (adoption, guardianship, marriage, inheritance, disputes in and out of court); economic interaction (property, economic independence/dependence of sons in relation to fathers); training in specialist skills (doctors, actors, artists), loans, guarantees, etc.; rituals (naming, rites de passage, funerals and commemoration, dedications, cultic associations); war (military commands, organization of land and sea forces); and political contexts, both informal (hetaireiai) and formal (Assembly, Council). Volume II deals with corporate groups recruited by patrifiliation: tribes and trittyes (both pre-Kleisthenic and Kleisthenic), phratries, genê, and demes. The section on the demes stresses variety rather than common features, and provides up-to-date information on location and prosopography.
Keywords:
Athens,
kinship,
anthropology,
history,
prosopography,
law
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2018 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198788249 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2019 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198788249.001.0001 |
