Bondarenko Dmitri M. Homoarchy

86
predominate kin at the community level. The second variant is represented
by Benin (again, among other cultures including African [e.g., McCulloch et al.
1954: 160; Ksenofontova 1970]) where extended families within community
preserved homoarchic kinship ties, and thus the latter dominated in the
community as a whole though in the interfamily relations they were intertwined
with corporate (essentially heterarchic) ties of neighborhood. 64 The bigger the
community the higher the role of it as a whole was, compared to that of a
family as its constituent part (Bradbury 1957: 31).
Every extended family inhabited a compound divided into several
parts, each occupied by a nuclear family – a grown-up man with all his goods
and chattels, first of all with his unmarried children and wives whom he could
have “as many… as he wishes and can feed” in addition to “a great number of
concubines” (Dapper 1975/1668: 162). By the early-20 th century evidence, an
average Bini man at a mature age had seven wives including two already
passed away (Thomas 1910a: I, 15).
By the ethnographic evidence of the mid-20 th century, the basic
productive units (“farming groups”) most often were nuclear families
(Bradbury 1973: 150–151, 153–154). On the other hand, Sargent (although
without profound argumentation) supposed that during the first centuries of the
Second dynasty period the productive unite still was community as a whole
(1986: 403, 406, 408, 409). 65 In any case, even in the mid-20 th century
extended families had usually been preserving economic and consumption
unity (Bradbury 1957: 27–30).
As has already been mentioned (with the relevant references), not
nuclear but the extended family was the basic, substantial element of the
community not in the economic respect only but socio-culturally as well.
Precisely the extended family was recognized as the organism, self-sufficient at
the lower level of social life. The structure-forming nature of the extended
family becomes especially obvious if one takes into consideration the fact that
besides economic interests, its unity was based on ideological foundations, such
as, for instance, the hereditary extended-family totemic taboos (Dennett 1906:
231; Thomas 1915–1916, 1919–1920) and, most significantly, the ancestor cult,
as far as its objects, though organized in a clear hierarchy of more and less
important ancestors (Bradbury 1957: 56; 1973: 166, 231–233, 238–250), were
worshipped by extended families as wholes disregarding the degree of an
ancestor’s kindred proximity to this or that nuclear family: there was no
dominant nuclear family in an extended one.
One’s not only formal status but also real weight in the community
was directly connected with the person’s position in the extended family
(Sidahome 1964: 128). In particular, the obligation of the senior men – the
edion age-grade members was to rule extended families, as well as
communities. As it was pointed out above (chapter 3, section 4), definitely
there was a kind of extended families junior members oppression. Strict and