Kinship-based social inequality in Bronze Age Europe
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- 8 November 2019
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Science
- Vol. 366 (6466), 731-734
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aax6219
Abstract
Revealing and understanding the mechanisms behind social inequality in prehistoric societies is a major challenge. By combining genome wide data, isotopic evidence as well as anthropological and archaeological data, we go beyond the dominating supra-regional approaches in archaeogenetics to shed light on the complexity of social status, inheritance rules and mobility during the Bronze Age. We apply a deep micro-regional approach and analyze genome wide data of 104 human individuals deriving from farmstead-related cemeteries from the Late Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age in southern Germany. Our results reveal that individual households lasting several generations consisted of a high-status core family and unrelated low-status individuals, a social organization accompanied by patrilocality and female exogamy, and the stability of this system over 700 years.Funding Information
- Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften (WIN project “Times of Upheaval: Changes of Society and Landscape at the Beginning of the Bronze Age)
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (KR 4015/1-1)
- Max Planck Society
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