Post-marital residence patterns in LBK: Comparison of different models

Exploring sexual division of labour at “Nitra Horné Krškany” cemetery using stone tool use-wear analysis, physical activity markers, diet, and mobility as proxies

“…Since strontium isotope data from local animals are not available, nor are baseline models predicting geological strontium variations, a range of values for children and juveniles was used as the "local" indicator, assuming that children were more likely local because they had less time to migrate than adults in their lifetime (Montgomery et al 2005). The resulting "local" range based on two standard deviations from the non-adult strontium values mean is 0,70932 and 0,70964 (n = 11; mean = 0,7094882, SD = 8,022695E-05), which roughly corresponds to the range of the main cluster as identified by Whittle et al (2013: Table 4.25) and Hrnčíř et al (2020).…”

“…Given the demographic skew to females, perhaps exogamy was aligned with polygyny, as suggested by Hrnčíř et al (2020). Male mobility in young adulthood may also be a possibility, though less likely as it would require all incoming men to have died while travelling away from the settlement.…”

“…Male mobility in young adulthood may also be a possibility, though less likely as it would require all incoming men to have died while travelling away from the settlement. Another possibility, raised by Hrnčíř et al (2020), is taking women captive (again, not contradicting exogamy, but rather the agency under which it took place).…”

Socio-cultural practices may have affected sexual dimorphism in stature in Early Neolithic Europe

“…Other researchers have noted specific situations in which culture buffers males against environmental effects and creates vulnerability in females: there is an association between decreased female stature and polygyny in cultures around the globe (see Kanazawa & Novak, 2005); female height was more influenced by economic conditions during infancy and early childhood than males in lower-class 19th-century Europe (Baten & Murray, 2000); sexual dimorphism ratios in modern Chile decreased after the institution of social and government programs to combat gender inequality (Castellucci et al, 2021); and 20th-century female stature decreased in India during times of environmental stress due to sexually disproportionate investment of scarce resources (Moradi & Guntupalli, 2009). Strontium isotope values from LBK sites identify a large portion of LBK females across the region as being non-local to those sites, though patterns in specific locations vary, broadly indicating patrilocality and the potential for differential cultural treatments of females as compared to males (Bentley et al, 2002, 2012; Hrnčíř et al, 2020). We suggest that culturally mediated differences led to sex-specific stress responses in Neolithic Central Europe, via cultural practices which either directly decrease female stature or, more likely, support catch-up growth preferentially in males.…”

Women, residential patterns and early social complexity. From theory to practice in Copper Age Iberia

“…Of course, extrapolating this to prehistory is by no means straightforward. Cross cultural studies show certain trends and an enormous diversity in relation to kinship systems and residence patterns (Stone and King, 2019;Hrnčíř et al, 2020a;Brück, 2021). Neither the general guidelines nor particular examples allow us to independently address the entirety of human behavior.…”