title: Lineage interests and nonreproductive strategies : An evolutionary approach to medieval religious women.
abstract: The nonreproductive role of religious women in the European Middle Ages presents the ideal forum for the discussion of elite family strategies within a historical context. I apply the evolutionary concept of kin selection to this group of women in order to explain how a social formation in which religious women failed to reproduce benefited medieval noble lineages. After a brief review of the roles of noble women in the later Middle Ages, I identify two benefits that nonreproductive women provided within a patrilineal inheritance system. First, spatial segregation and Christian ideology together served to curtail the production of offspring who could pose a threat to lineage interests. Second, cloistered noble women served as a strong political and economic bloc that could further lineage interests within a religious context. Finally, I discuss the evolutionary basis for the formation of groups of nonreproductive women. Using the foundation provided by animal behavioral studies, I apply the twin concepts of cooperative breeding and parental manipulation to noble lineages of the medieval period.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, 87131, Albuquerque, NM. ehill@unm.edu.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Hill
keywords: Cooperative breeding; Lineage; Medieval religious women; Naked mole-rats; Nuns; Parental manipulation