ConclusionsIn this paper we have tried to show how families interact with the wider spatial groups of which they are a part, and to illustrate some of the internal, kinship-based, dynamics of north Puglian neighbourhood organization. While it is not our intention to add to an ever-widening typology of Italian family systems, we have also suggested that in several crucial respects - the distribution of household forms, the organization of service, post-marriage residence patterns - eighteenth-century Ascoli fits uneasily into existing historical models of south Italian household formation. Many of the differences we detect, derive from the broader kinship perspective we have adopted. Wider kinship ideologies and inheritance usages impinge on household formation in a number of distinct ways. Whatever the intentions or the divisions imposed by the compilers of the State of Souls listings, there can be little doubt that the casate of Ascoli's eighteenth-century elite are the expression of a strongly held corporatist patrilineal ideology. Similarly, systematic early marriage (coupled with the formation of independent nuclear families) is made viable by the constant ongoing support of maternal kin. When, as in both eighteenth- and twentieth-century Ascoli, households are embedded in tightly clustered matrifocal neighbourhood associations or casa complexes, the distinction between complex, extended and simple families loses much of its force; residence becomes ambiguous and difficult to define. Yet inheritance and marriage payment systems are not determinative; one of the more surprising findings of our research is the curious survival of matrifocal neighbourhood organization, despite the loss of its property base. |