Alternative Lifeways Across Space & Time

North America

Inuit

Pacific Northwest Indians

Hutterites

Sioux

Old Order Amish

Southern Paiutes

Puebloans

The Farm

Hot Springs Ranch

Apaches

Maya

Zapotec of La Paz

South America

Piaroa

Quechoa

Inca

Europe & Atlantic

Scottish Highlanders

Irish Farming Villages

Dark Ages Europe

Alpine Pastoralists

Alpujarra

Roman Empire

Tristan Islanders

Africa

Ancient Egypt

Nubians

Jenne-Jeno

Post-Colonial Africa

Samburu

Fipa

Bushmen

Asia & Pacific

Iranian Nomads

Ladakhi

Lepchas

Chinese Society

Hadhramaut

Indian Society

Birhor

Kadar

Malapandaram

Paliyans

Yanadi

Rural Thai

Batek

Semai

Buid

Chewong

Yap Islanders

Ifaluk

Bali Rice Culture

New Guinea Highlanders

Tahitians

Australian Aborigines

To be updated!

Irish farming villages were an early test case for social anthropology. Villages were traditionally arranged concentrically with village commons and homes in the center, family gardens and cropfields behind the homes, communal pastures beyond the family farmsteads, and a buffer zone of unmanaged woodlands and open lands beyond that, stretching to the next village or market town. Land reform had frozen that structure, giving the village perpetual title to the common lands and granting each family perpetual title to its farmstead with the provision that those titled lands could not be broken up or sold.

This meant that each family had to keep their farm in good condition and pass it on to a single family in the next generation. Sustaining the village was all about managing the transfer of resources from one generation to the next, limiting the birth rate and cultivating the skills in young people that would make them successful inheritors.

These villagers took their existing traditions of communal matchmaking and turned them into a robust institution that prolonged courtship and delayed marriage, formalizing the turnover of the farm to the couple which the village elders - not just the parents - deemed capable, and resulting in fewer children from older couples. The village elders would then work together to place "surplus" young people on childless farms, in neighboring villages, or in the worst case, as apprentices to merchants in the nearest market town.

Traditional communities are aware of the potential for inbreeding, and have customs for exposing their young people to partners from distant communities. So a small community is only sustainable if it’s part of a larger network of communities with shared experience and values.

Governance was informal, by village elders with demonstrated farming success.

Pasturelands, streams, and woodlands were held and worked in common. Family gardens and croplands were worked by the family with communal participation in harvests and other major efforts.

Family farms were owned and managed by the farming couple until a competent younger couple could be identified to take over. If possible, the most qualified son would be matched (by the village elders) with a qualified local woman, the marriage would occur, and the farm would be formally transferred, with the elder couple moving into the “east room” of the farmhouse, which was always maintained for that purpose. If there were only daughters, the village elders would attempt to match the most qualified daughter with a qualified local man to take over the farm. For childless couples, the village elders attempted to make arrangements with “surplus” children from other local families or families from neighboring villages.

The right matches often took a long time to achieve, so that young people were often in their late 30’s or 40’s before they married, took over a farm and became full members of the community. Young people who could not be matched and placed within a village or a neighboring village were apprenticed to merchants in the nearest market town.

In the mid-18th century, national land reform gave Irish farming villages perpetual title to common land and families perpetual title to family homesteads.

Sustaining the village was all about managing the transfer of resources from one generation to the next, limiting the birth rate and cultivating the skills in young people that would make them successful inheritors.