Unraveling ancestry, kinship, and violence in a Late Neolithic mass grave

Abstract

The third millennium BCE was a period of major cultural and demographic changes in Europe that signaled the beginning of the Bronze Age. People from the Pontic steppe expanded westward, leading to the formation of the Corded Ware complex and transforming the genetic landscape of Europe. At the time, the Globular Amphora culture (3300–2700 BCE) existed over large parts of Central and Eastern Europe, but little is known about their interaction with neighboring Corded Ware groups and steppe societies. Here we present a detailed study of a Late Neolithic mass grave from southern Poland belonging to the Globular Amphora culture and containing the remains of 15 men, women, and children, all killed by blows to the head. We sequenced their genomes to between 1.1- and 3.9-fold coverage and performed kinship analyses that demonstrate that the individuals belonged to a large extended family. The bodies had been carefully laid out according to kin relationships by someone who evidently knew the deceased. From a population genetic viewpoint, the people from Koszyce are clearly distinct from neighboring Corded Ware groups because of their lack of steppe-related ancestry. Although the reason for the massacre is unknown, it is possible that it was connected with the expansion of Corded Ware groups, which may have resulted in competition for resources and violent conflict. Together with the archaeological evidence, these analyses provide an unprecedented level of insight into the kinship structure and social behavior of a Late Neolithic community.

Kinship, acquired and inherited status, and population structure at the Early Bronze Age Mokrin necropolis in northern Serbia

“…We found a rather high number of mitochondrial lineages (14 haplotypes in 24 individuals). High mtDNA diversity in combination with archaeological and isotope evidence can indicate female exogamy (21,40,41). Given the absence of genetic substructure and the fact that both Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial diversity is moderateto-high at Mokrin, the most parsimonious explanation is that this cemetery served a single, large, and contiguous population.…”

Kinship Determination in Archeological Contexts Through DNA Analysis

“…The analysis of a Late Neolithic mass grave from Poland, associated with the Globular Amphora Culture, demonstrated that the 15 buried individuals belonged to the same extended family. The relative position of the bodies was in accordance with kin relationship, revealing that, after a violent death, someone who knew these people, took care of their burial (Schroeder et al, 2019).…”

De-contaminating the aDNA – archaeology dialogue on mobility and migration: discussing the culture-historical legacy

“…This means that in order to better understand the processes connected to human mobility, we should not only look at the overall European scale, but rather we have to treat every regional and local situation as a historical case by itself, in which some overall factors might come to play, but which will still show specific characteristics. So in order to better understand the overall situation, we need more regional and local case studies combining archaeological and molecular biological data, like the one from Knipper et al (2017), Mittnik et al (2019) or Schroeder et al (2019). And also, we should pay more attention to the excellent archaeological work that has been, and is currently being carried in several regions for the third millen nium BC (Larsson 2009; Beckerman 2015; Iversen 2015; Suter 2017; Großmann 2016; Schultrich 2019; Kleijne 2019 just to name a few).…”

“…To bring these nuances to the fore goes beyond a short paper, but the large body of archaeological work on third millennium local and regional contexts referred to here demonstrates that the material for such an endeavour is already available. It will have to be combined and better integrated with molecular biological studies, which now thankfully increasingly move towards local scale levels (Veeramah 2018;Schroeder et al 2019).…”