Abstract
The Upper Palaeolithic double burial of newborns and the single burial of a ca. 3-month-old infant uncovered at the Gravettian site of Krems-Wachtberg, Austria, are of paramount importance given the rarity of immature human remains from this time. Genome-wide ancient DNA shows that the male infants of the double grave are the earliest reported case of monozygotic twins, while the single grave´s individual was their 3rd-degree male relative. We assessed the individuals´ age at death by applying histological and µCT inspection of the maxillary second incisors (i2) in conjunction with C- and N-isotope ratios and Barium (Ba) intake as biomarker for breastfeeding. The results show that the twins were full-term newborns, and that while individual 2 died at birth, individual 1 survived for about 50 days. The findings show that Gravettian mortuary behaviour also included re-opening of a grave and manipulation of its layout and content.
Highlights
The Upper Palaeolithic double burial of newborns and the single burial of a ca. 3-month-old infant uncovered at the Gravettian site of Krems-Wachtberg, Austria, are of paramount importance given the rarity of immature human remains from this time
A Gravettian/Pavlovian attribution of the occupation is attested for the infant burials which are of deep interest for ontogenetic studies of early anatomically modern humans given the rarity of immature human skeletal remains of the Upper Palaeolithic[14,15,16,17]
We recovered 264,795 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) (0.282× coverage) for ind[2] by pooling data from four uracil-DNA glycosylase (UDG)-treated libraries (Table 1 and Supplementary Data 1). Both individuals in Burial 1 were consistent with being genetic males based on the ratio of sequenced reads aligning to the X and Y chromosomes (Table 1)
Summary
The Upper Palaeolithic double burial of newborns and the single burial of a ca. 3-month-old infant uncovered at the Gravettian site of Krems-Wachtberg, Austria, are of paramount importance given the rarity of immature human remains from this time. A Gravettian/Pavlovian attribution of the occupation is attested for the infant burials which are of deep interest for ontogenetic studies of early anatomically modern humans given the rarity of immature human skeletal remains of the Upper Palaeolithic[14,15,16,17]. They substantially enrich the debate about ritualistic and mortuary practices among Gravettian hunter–gatherer societies. The longer and narrower grave pit of Burial 2, a single grave measuring ca. 0.45 × 0.22 × 0.15 m
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