A high-resolution picture of kinship practices in an Early Neolithic tomb

Abstract

To explore kinship practices at chambered tombs in Early Neolithic Britain, we combined archaeological and genetic analyses of 35 individuals who lived about 5,700 years ago and were entombed at Hazleton North long cairn 1 . Twenty-seven are part of the first extended pedigree reconstructed from ancient DNA, a five-generation family whose many interrelationships provide statistical power to document kinship practices that were invisible without direct genetic data. Patrilineal descent was key in determining who was buried in the tomb, as all 15 inter-generational transmissions were through men. The presence of women who had reproduced with lineage men and the absence of adult lineage daughters suggests virilocal burial and female exogamy. We demonstrate that one male progenitor reproduced with four women: the descendants of two of those women were buried in the same half of the tomb over all generations. This suggests that maternal sub-lineages were grouped into branches whose distinctiveness was recognized during the tomb's construction. Four males descended from non-lineage fathers and mothers who also reproduced with lineage males, suggesting that some men adopted their reproductive partners' children by other males into their patriline. Eight individuals were not close biological relatives of the main lineage, raising the possibility that kinship also encompassed social bonds independent of biological relatedness.

Three Reagents for in-Solution Enrichment of Ancient Human DNA at More than a Million SNPs

“…Encouragingly, all data from the same individuals plots at the same position, consistent with the pattern observed in the first publication of Twist Ancient DNA data where Neolithic individuals from Hazleton North in southern Britain clustered tightly whether the data source was 1240k or Twist (39). That study also showed that Twist and 1240k data could be robustly co-analyzed to detect familial relatedness (39).…”

“…To explore how bias might affect our results, we began by projecting the data from the 15 libraries at the bottom of Table 1 onto a Principal Component Analysis of data from diverse present-day West Eurasian people living today (Figure 4). Encouragingly, all data from the same individuals plots at the same position, consistent with the pattern observed in the first publication of Twist Ancient DNA data where Neolithic individuals from Hazleton North in southern Britain clustered tightly whether the data source was 1240k or Twist (39). That study also showed that Twist and 1240k data could be robustly co-analyzed to detect familial relatedness (39).…”

“…Because of the multiple advantages associated with the Twist Ancient DNA reagent relative to 1240k in our testing, in June 2021 we performed our last of more than 28,500 1240k captures in our laboratory. Since then, we have performed more than 4,500 captures with Twist Ancient DNA reagent, and have already published our first data with this reagent (39). It is important for scientific communities periodically to update their methodologies when there are enough technical improvements, and we believe the advantages of new reagents are now so large that this time has come for ancient human DNA.…”

Social arrangements. Kinship, descent and affinity in the mortuary architecture of Early Neolithic Britain and Ireland

“…A new study identifies close kin connected by patrilineal descent at the Cotswold–Severn chambered tomb at Hazleton North, Gloucestershire – importantly, this study combines 1240K genome-wide aDNA analyses with consideration of the placement of the dead in six distinct compartments which form two separate chambered areas. This integration of the genetic and contextual archaeological evidence allows the authors to identify that the locations within the tomb of 27 out of 35 sampled individuals are consistent with a virilocal patrilineal descent system in which maternal descent clusters were also significant (Fowler et al 2021). One male in the first generation reproduced with four women, and some of the descendants of two of these women were consistently placed in the south side of the tomb over several generations, suggesting that descent from a specific maternal ancestor was significant in deciding where to place the dead.…”

QuickPed: an online tool for drawing pedigrees and analysing relatedness

“…To the best of our knowledge, no online pedigree programs offer analysis of relatedness, like coefficients of kinship and gene identity. Such coefficients play an important role in many fields, as exemplified by recent studies in quantitative genetics [ 5 ], forensic genetics [ 6 , 7 ] and ancient DNA [ 8 ]. Despite their widespread use, there is a serious lack of user-friendly software for computing relatedness coefficients, particularly for users without specialised bioinformatic skills.…”