Close-kin marriage in Roman Anatolia

Many societies have a normative preference for close-kin marriage of one or another variety. Whether this was true of any part of the Roman world has been hotly debated in recent decades. Earlier scholarship suggests that marriage between close kin may have been considerably more common in some part...

Descrizione completa

Dettagli Bibliografici
Autore principale: Thonemann, P
Natura: Journal article
Pubblicazione: Cambridge University Press 2017
Descrizione
Riassunto:Many societies have a normative preference for close-kin marriage of one or another variety. Whether this was true of any part of the Roman world has been hotly debated in recent decades. Earlier scholarship suggests that marriage between close kin may have been considerably more common in some parts of the Roman world (e.g. Egypt) than in others (e.g. the Latin West). This paper assembles the evidence for close-kin marriage throughout the Asia Minor peninsula during the Roman imperial period, and concludes that close-kin marriage – particularly in the form of FBD first-cousin marriage – may have been unusually common and/or normatively desirable in Lykia and neighbouring regions.