Kinship and social organization in Copper Age Europe. A cross-disciplinary analysis of archaeology, DNA, isotopes, and anthropology from two Bell Beaker cemeteries

Abstract

We present a high-resolution cross-disciplinary analysis of kinship structure and social institutions in two Late Copper Age Bell Beaker culture cemeteries of South Germany containing 24 and 18 burials, of which 34 provided genetic information. By combining archaeological, anthropological, genetic and isotopic evidence we are able to document the internal kinship and residency structure of the cemeteries and the socially organizing principles of these local communities. The buried individuals represent four to six generations of two family groups, one nuclear family at the Alburg cemetery, and one seemingly more extended at Irlbach. While likely monogamous, they practiced exogamy, as six out of eight non-locals are women. Maternal genetic diversity is high with 23 different mitochondrial haplotypes from 34 individuals, whereas all males belong to one single Y-chromosome haplogroup without any detectable contribution from Y-chromosomes typical of the farmers who had been the sole inhabitants of the region hundreds of years before. This provides evidence for the society being patrilocal, perhaps as a way of protecting property among the male line, while in-marriage from many different places secured social and political networks and prevented inbreeding. We also find evidence that the communities practiced selection for which of their children (aged 0–14 years) received a proper burial, as buried juveniles were in all but one case boys, suggesting the priority of young males in the cemeteries. This is plausibly linked to the exchange of foster children as part of an expansionist kinship system which is well attested from later Indo-European-speaking cultural groups.

Mobility patterns in inland southwestern Sweden during the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age

“…A large body of recent research based on prehistoric human remains have applied aDNA analysis to address questions related to biological sex (e.g. Hedenstierna-Jonson et al 2017), kinship and social Cassidy et al 2020;Sánchez-Quintoa et al 2019;Schroeder et al 2019;Sjögren et al 2020), diseases (e.g. Rascovan et al 2019), mobility and demographic developments (e.g.…”

Tales from the Supplementary Information: Ancestry Change in Chalcolithic–Early Bronze Age Britain Was Gradual with Varied Kinship Organization

“…Archaeologists and archaeogeneticists are now just beginning to explore how the identification of closer genetic relationships between burials can illuminate kinship and marriage patterns, as well as mobility, admixture, social organization and funerary behaviour in the past (e.g. Cassidy et al 2020;Furtwängler et al 2020;Mittnik et al 2019;Schroeder et al 2019;Sjögren et al 2020). Sixteen (22 per cent) of the 72 C-EBA burials examined by Olalde et al (2018), including some of the close genetic relatives, have been subject to strontium and oxygen stable isotope analyses to investigate individual mobility (Montgomery et al 2019;Parker Pearson et al 2016;Pellegrini et al 2016; providing additional detail on the origins and life-histories of particular individuals.…”

“…To date, archaeological studies of kinship and marriage based on genetic evidence have tended to reproduce normative visions of gender and familial relationships derived from contemporary western experience (e.g. Haak et al 2008;Mittnik et al 2019;Schroeder et al 2019;Sjögren et al 2020) and that do not consider cross-cultural evidence for variability in the definition and organization of kinship. Anthropological studies of kinship indicate that kinship relations are not biogenetically determined but comprise socially structured links that are culturally constituted as natural facts (Schneider 1984; for overview, see Brück in press).…”

“…We show how these insights can be combined with other types of archaeological data to develop more reflexive narratives of the past by assessing data pertaining to the genetics of Chalcolithic-Early Bronze Age (C-EBA: c. 2450-1600 BC) Britain provided in the supplementary information of Olalde et al (2018). In particular, we critically examine suggestions that ancestry change in C-EBA Britain was characterized by a sudden large-scale migration of males practising strict systems of exogamy, as has been suggested for other areas of Europe in the third and early second millennia BC (Kristiansen et al 2017;Sjögren et al 2020). If this was the case for Britain, we would expect to see an initial pulse followed by a rapid decline of ancestry related to Neolithic populations of Britain, representing initial exogamous pairings between incoming men and local women and then rapid displacement of local ancestry (Furtwängler et al 2020).…”

“…Their focus is on the development of Corded Ware groups in central Europe, but they imply that similar mechanisms were responsible for the dispersal of steppe-related ancestry and early Indo-European languages across Europe through the third millennium BC (cf. Mittnik et al 2019;Sjögren et al 2020).…”