Community differentiation and kinship among Europe’s first farmers

Abstract

Community differentiation is a fundamental topic of the social sciences, and its prehistoric origins in Europe are typically assumed to lie among the complex, densely populated societies that developed millennia after their Neolithic predecessors. Here we present the earliest, statistically significant evidence for such differentiation among the first farmers of Neolithic Europe. By using strontium isotopic data from more than 300 early Neolithic human skeletons, we find significantly less variance in geographic signatures among males than we find among females, and less variance among burials with ground stone adzes than burials without such adzes. From this, in context with other available evidence, we infer differential land use in early Neolithic central Europe within a patrilocal kinship system.

Crop manuring and intensive land management by Europe’s first farmers

“…at Talheim, southwest Germany, where an entire community was killed by assailants wielding stone axes like those used to clear land (39). The fresh perspective on land use developed here lends support to the inference that differential access to intensively managed, heritable plots of land contributed to social differentiation in early European farming communities (40). Independent archaeobotanical evidence for the intergenerational transfer of arable land within kin groups is available at Vaihingen, southwest Germany (41).…”

Tracing the genetic origin of Europe's first farmers reveals insights into their social organization

“…after the carrying capacity of a particular region has been reached) [66]. Patrilocality has also been suggested in recent bioarchaeological studies, for example by investigating aDNA evidence from Neolithic site Treilles [45], or stable isotopes from LBK communities in Central Europe [68].…”

Strontium concentration, radiogenic (87Sr/86Sr) and stable (δ88Sr) strontium isotope systematics in a controlled feeding study

“…Taylor et al, 2013;Montgomery, Budd, and Evans 2000) to larger scale regional studies aimed at investigating broader social trends at the population level (e.g. Haverkort et al, 2008;Bentley et al, 2012). There has also been an increasing use of this technique to study the provenance and management strategies of archaeological fauna (Viner et al, 2010;Knipper 2011;Stephan et al, 2012).…”