title: Reconstructing the history of residence strategies in Indo-European-speaking societies: neo-, uxori-, and virilocality.
abstract: Linguists and archaeologists have used reconstructions of early Indo-European residence strategies to constrain hypotheses about the homeland and trajectory of dispersal of Indo-European languages; however, these reconstructions are largely based on unsystematic and a historical use of the linguistic and ethnographic evidence, coupled with substantial bias in interpretation. Here I use cross-cultural data in a phylogenetic comparative framework to reconstruct the pattern of change in residence strategies in the history of societies speaking Indo-European languages. The analysis provides evidence in support of prevailing virilocality with alternative neolocality for Proto-Indo-European, and that this pattern may have extended back to Proto-Indo-Hittite. These findings bolster interpretations of the archaeological evidence that emphasize the "non-matricentric" structure of early Indo-European society; however, they also counter the notion that early Indo-European society was strongly "patricentric." I discuss implications of these findings in the context of the archaeological and genetic evidence on prehistoric social organization.
authors: 1 Department of Anthropology, University College London, 14 Taviton Street, London WC1H 0BW, UK. Current address: Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501.
authors: Laura
authors: L
authors: Fortunato
mesh_terms: D000884:Anthropology, Cultural; D014644:Genetic Variation; D049668:History, 15th Century; D049669:History, 16th Century; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D049690:History, Ancient; D049691:History, Medieval; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language / Q000266:history; D008037:Linguistics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016015:Logistic Models; D008957:Models, Genetic; D058974:Phylogeography / Q000266:history / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011336:Probability; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D009626:Terminology as Topic