> Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 22:50:26 +0200
> From: James Frusetta <gerakkag_at_mail.bol.bg>
> Subject: re: walls and raiding and walls again.
>
>
> Also true, some of the goodies are the food in the fields and the herds,
> so the locals have to venture outside to protect them, which
> fortifications don't help with too much. So you can still raid *those*.
> The big sites for forts in the Balkans are the passes, where you can
> bushwhack raiders, armies (and merchants) rather than settlements.
FWIW, the tendency in Southern Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo in the last few centuries was to band together in steads/communes of around 50-100 people, consisting of an extended family headed by the family patriarch. The Serbs in that area lived that way up until the latter part of the last century; the Albanians also adopted a similar social structure.
Hence when you hear about mass killings in Kosovo during the war there, the numbers tend to be in the 50-odd area.
The impetus for organising that way was because the wane of the Ottoman Porte meant there was little law in that area, aside from that you made yourself. Banding together in a defensible stead made a lot of sense. (Source is Noel Malcolm's Short History of Kosovo).
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