Family Matters. The Levirate Marriage as a Nomadic Custom in Medieval Eurasia

Family life among medieval Eurasian nomads is still largely unknown due to the scarcity of written sources and the need to rely on ethnographic information originating from disparate chronological and geographical contexts. Thanks to developments in aDNA research, these uncharted territories are being progressively explored. This allows us to re-evaluate past paradigms on ethnicity, family dynamics, and human mobility. This article attempts to reassess the social limits and cultural connotations of the levirate marriage by drawing on recent genetic findings in burial sites of the Carpathian Basin (in today’s Austria and Hungary). The term »levirate« refers to a marriage between a widow and her late husband’s sibling or other relative. The custom was widespread throughout space and time, although it was particularly common in patriarchal cultures that permitted polygyny and enforced bride price. The paper aims to investigate the practice and rhetoric of levirate marriage in intercultural interactions between sedentary and nomadic communities, as well as within the writers’ ethnographic and literary traditions. The article will provide an analysis of ancient and medieval sources discussing levirate and marriage customs among Eurasian nomads coming from both western Eurasia (Greece, Rome, the Caucasus, the Near East, and Europe) and China. Following an examination of the biblical origin of the term levirate and an analysis of the socio-economic impact of this practice, the paper will demonstrate how the authors’ varying degrees of familiarity with the custom influenced the cultural significance that they assigned to the practice and will make it possible to place the newly discovered genetic data within a more comprehensive historical perspective.