of a senior meber, and most of the larger guest room groups were built round a lineage core, though often outnumbered by neighbours, affines and other kin. Household heads of some pretension may prefer solitude in their own guest room, or even their living room, to accepting regular hospitality. Personal inclination and convenience had a lot to do with where people went; and only limited conclusions could be drawn from their guest room affiliations about their loyalties in village politics.
People, particularly the men, are quick to anger, and quick to draw knives or guns. Even the boys carry knives, and hardly any adult villager goes unarmed. On one occasion a twelve-year-old lad was brought into us with a severe cut across his fingers. He had attempted, exactly like his elders, to intervene between two comrades who had drawn knives in anger, and had caught one knife by the blade. This incident provided the villagers with a peg on which to hang public denouncement of the folly of village violence. I was to grow accustomed to these self-accusations of wildness, barbarity and trouble making, but the harangues seemed to make little difference to the realities of village life.
My nine months in Sakaltutan were comparatively peaceful, and I assumed at first that the one or two acts of violence of which I heard were exceptional. But over the years of which I have evidence the total number of acts of violence is considerable, and enquiries in other parts of Turkey lead me to suppose that it is not in any way untypical.
Among the men of Sakaltutan, from 1948 to 1955, fighting or assault with knives or guns took place on at least six occasions. Five people were wounded and one killed; and in addition one elderly woman died two weeks after an assault by another woman, but the court exonerated her attacker from murder. In nearby villages I heard by chance gossip of four deaths and two woundings in the years 1947 to 1950, without making systematic enquiries. Two different men to whom I was introduced by friends from Sakaltutan boasted to me of occasions on which they had killed in a quarrel.
In Elbashï one killing and one wounding happened during the period of my field work there; the killing while I was present