Notes from Source: Scholars of Mediterranean societies rarely treat the area as a cultural unit, although ethnographies from both littorals give evidence of common themes. In particular, cultural codes on both sides make women the repositories of honor & strongly link F sexuality to shame. An ecological approach to the origins of these codes reveals that the Mediterranean region is a culture area. A common org’al problem pervades societies with bilateral kinship & patrilineal kinship alike. This is the problem of org’ing men in groups. The problem stems from the competitive & conflictual relationship between pastoral & agrarian claims on natural resources. The conflict is pronounced in the Mediterranean because agri’al expansion, linked to the rise of cities, infringed upon herdsmen in a very early period, before technologies were available to states for stabilizing access to resources, adjudicating conflict, & smoothing the transition to less extensive forms of animal husbandry. In much of the Mediterranean, pastoralism & agriculture coexist, competing for land & water in a way which fragments the soc org of both types of community & blurs the boundary between them. The sex-linked codes of honor & shame serve at once to protect the integrity & property of minimal SP units-fam’s or lineages-& to mobilize loyalties within these units which are themselves vulnerable to fragmentation. In the process, women become both objects of control by these units & a symbolic focus holding them together. AA.

Further Notes: Place: Pittsburgh Publisher: University of Pittsburgh