The traditional image of northern Iberian mountain settlements is that
they are largely egalitarian, homogeneous, and survivals of archaic
forms of 'agrarian collectivism'. In this book, based both on extensive
fieldwork and detailed study of local records, Brian Juan O'Neill offers
a different perspective, questioning prevailing views on both empirical
as well as theoretical and methodological grounds. Through a detailed
examination of three major areas of social life - land tenure,
cooperative labour exchanges, and marriage and inheritance practices -
in one particular hamlet, the author demonstrates the predominance of
forms of institutionalized economic inequality and social
differentiation within the peasantry. Situating the local study within a
wider European and Mediterranean ethnographic and geographical
framework, O'Neill offers a refreshing and challenging way of combining
the research methods of anthropology with those of social and economic
history. His book will appeal to anthropologists, historians,
sociologists, geographers and demographers interested in the present and
past social structure of European village communities, as well as to
those concerned with the growing links between anthropology and history.