anthropologist Franz Steiner studied "what happens in different cultural and historical situation to people who become unmoored" (Steiner himself was a refugee, and was interested in how refugees can go from being welcomed to be "gradually degraded and exploited")
he took an interest in a concept from Roman Law, potestas, "denotes among other things a father's power of arbitrary command over his dependants and their property," including slaves, war captives, orphans, refugees, harbored runaways, criminals, and debtors
"the process of giving refuge"--both in Rome and cultures which had courtly societies--generally led to "the transformation of basic domestic arrangements, especially as captured women were incorporated, further reinforcing the potestas of fathers" (521)
Steiner's observations "are directly relevant to debates about the origins of patriarchy"
Feminist anthropologists are interested in the historical relationship between male violence and "the transformation of women's status in the home," and Graeber and Wengrow note, hopefully, that "we are [...] beginning to gather together enough material to begin understanding how that process actually worked"
[all quotes in this note from Graeber and Wengrow's summation of Steiner's life and work, and its reception]