I shall turn later to a more detailed account of village rank. As I have already said, there is considerable mobility from generation to generation. This social mobility between households and lineages is clearly systematically connected with the domestic cycle I have outlined. Exactly how the cycle works out will vary with the type of social situation, and especially with the resources available, the possible uses of spare labour, and the control of the household head over married sons. To analyse this adequately would require detailed histories of a number of villages. Instead, since written records for villages barely exist, and since I devoted too little of my time in the field to reconstructing in detail the history of the two villages, I must rely on argument based on the material available to me.
I distinguished two types of land situation: two models. Real village situations were obviously always far more complicated than the models indicate; yet these models correspond approximately to two stages in the social history of a large number of Anatolian villages; and they make possible illuminating deductions about the changes which have taken place.
In the first situation, land is freely available. Any household is able to take over land so long as it has the manpower and the draught animals to work it. Land not worked reverts to pasture. In the second situation, all cultivable land that can be spared from the village pasture is owned and cultivated. Households can only increase their holdings by taking land from other households.
Other evidence supports this view. Reports from Alishar, a