Original scientific paper
Ethnicity and Biodemographic Structure in the Arbëreshe of the Province of Cosenza, Southern Italy, in the XIX Century
Giuseppe Tagarelli
Stefano Fiorini
Ana Piro
Donata Luiselli
Antonio Tagarelli
Davide Pettener
Abstract
Cultural and environmental factors interact in determining the genetic structure of human populations. Bio-demographic
investigations of ethnic minorities are able to disentangle the influences that these two components have on the
evolution of the genetic structure of a population. The ethnic minority of the Arbëreshe of the province of Cosenza (Calabria,
southern Italy) is analyzed in this paper and its bio-demographic structure in the early 1800s is compared with that
of neighboring Italian populations. The data derive from surnames recorded in the birth registers of the 19 Arbëreshe
municipalities of the province of Cosenza and in 5 non-Arbëreshe municipalities of the same province. Isonymy and repeated
pairs of surnames are used to analyze the bio-demographic structure of these populations, while analysis of isonymic
relationships is used to investigate the variability between populations. Higher values of marital isonymy and subdivision
into subpopulations characterize the Arbëreshe populations with respect to their non-Arbëreshe neighbors. However,
the high range of variability of these parameters suggests a strong influence of geographic location on the marriage pattern
of each community. At the same time, cultural differences linked to group identity had a strong impact in limiting
marriage exchanges between the different ethnic groups living in the province of Cosenza in the early 1800s. In fact, the
analysis of isonymic relationships demonstrates that geographic location shaped kinship patterns among the Arbëreshe
communities, but it also shows that the non-Arbëreshe neighbors formed a clearly separate reproductive cluster.
Keywords
ethnicity; bio-demography; surnames; genetic structure; Arbëreshe
Hrčak ID:
27327
URI
Publication date:
4.1.2007.
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