The research objective of this project is to study the family of the middle and lower social strata in the towns and villages of the early Byzantine Eastern Mediterranean, and to improve our understanding of structural, social and cultural conditions under which family diversity was experienced. I want to turn the attention especially to composition and size of the family, living arrangements, and the terms that governed the duties and responsibilities of parents toward their young children, and vice versa. The study pursues these questions on the household level, the basic unit of society, which has often been described as a microcosm of society, in which social relationships, economic systems, and cultural norms find their reflection. Apart from living arrangements, also inheritance and succession patterns reveal valuable information about the cultural ideas of family, reciprocity between generations, the relationships between parents and children, and between siblings and spouses. Thus, thus the study will discuss as well different forms of property transmission from one generation to the next, and link them to different family types and household patterns.