Final answer:
Young elaborates on how Albanian families used a matrilineal system to maintain power and property. This system allowed the passing of inheritance through female lines, often giving women's brothers and maternal uncles authority in the family.
Step-by-step explanation:
Antonia Young describes how Albanian families were part of a system that allowed them to retain power and property within the kin group, especially when male members often died young due to feuding. This system, which appears to be a form of matrilineal descent, ensured that familial ties, inheritance, and status were passed down through the female line. Under this system, women's brothers or maternal uncles typically had more authority within the family, and political power and possessions were passed to nephews and maternal relatives rather than to one's own sons.
In these kinship-based societies, the certainty of maternal relationships provided an advantage in determining descent and clan affiliation. Other systems based on patriarchy established a strict hierarchy based on gender, age, and family rank, where males generally held dominance within the same generational level, and the clan ideologists viewed divorce and widow remarriage negatively to maintain clan unity and property.
Various societies have had different ways to address the question of lineage and inheritance, often resulting in systems that established local power and even influence over government by wealthy, land-owning families. These systems, whether patrilineal or matrilineal, were deeply entwined with social customs, marriage practices, family structures, and hierarchies of power, all designed to perpetuate the family lineage and conserve its power and resources.