Abstract
Twenty-four palaeogenomes from Mokrin, a major Early Bronze Age necropolis in southeastern Europe, were sequenced to analyse kinship between individuals and to better understand prehistoric social organization. 15 investigated individuals were involved in genetic relationships of varying degrees. The Mokrin sample resembles a genetically unstructured population, suggesting that the community’s social hierarchies were not accompanied by strict marriage barriers. We find evidence for female exogamy but no indications for strict patrilocality. Individual status differences at Mokrin, as indicated by grave goods, support the inference that females could inherit status, but could not transmit status to all their sons. We further show that sons had the possibility to acquire status during their lifetimes, but not necessarily to inherit it. Taken together, these findings suggest that Southeastern Europe in the Early Bronze Age had a significantly different family and social structure than Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age societies of Central Europe.
Highlights
An understanding of the social organization of past societies is crucial to understanding recent human evolution, and several generations of archaeologists and anthropologists have worked to develop a suite of methods, both scientific and conceptual, for detecting social conditions in the archaeological record[1,2,3,4]
These methods have been used to investigate when social complexity, including social inequality, first a ppeared[5,6,7,8], the nature and function of early forms of social stratification, and how these emergent structures were perpetuated over time and s pace[9,10,11]
Archaeological kinship studies use mortuary evidence to understand the specific role of family structure in shaping social o rganization[13,14], and are critical for determining how familial relationships have influenced the emergence of social complexity and the evolution of persistent inequality[5,10,15,16]
Summary
An understanding of the social organization of past societies is crucial to understanding recent human evolution, and several generations of archaeologists and anthropologists have worked to develop a suite of methods, both scientific and conceptual, for detecting social conditions in the archaeological record[1,2,3,4] These methods have been used to investigate when social complexity, including social inequality, first a ppeared[5,6,7,8], the nature and function of early forms of social stratification, and how these emergent structures were perpetuated over time and s pace[9,10,11]. We note that the traditional view of Bronze Age communities as hierarchical chiefdoms ruled by hereditary elites has been challenged by several authors, such that the extent and nature of social inequalities in Bronze Age communities are still a matter of debate (e.g.31,32)
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