Iron Age massacre targeted women and children, new research reveals

 

New research reveals one of the largest prehistoric mass killings discovered in Europe, at the Gomolava burial sites in northern Serbia.

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Reconstruction of the burial event at Gomolava by S.N.

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Credit: Linda Fibiger et al

New research has revealed that women and children were deliberately targeted in one of the largest prehistoric mass killings discovered in Europe.

Archaeological investigations at the Gomolava burial sites in northern Serbia uncovered a grave containing the remains of more than 77 individuals, most of them women and children.

Buried together around 2,800 years ago, the victims suffered violent deaths, including bludgeoning and stabbing, in what researchers say was a planned act of large-scale violence.

“When we encounter mass graves from prehistory with this kind of demographic, we might expect they were families from a village that was attacked,” said co-lead and ERC grantee Associate Professor Barry Molloy, UCD School of Archaeology.

“Gomolava genuinely took us by surprise when our genetic analysis showed the majority of people studied were not only unrelated, not even their great–great-grandparents were. This was highly unusual for a prehistoric mass grave and not what we expect to find if they had all lived together in a village.”

Using a range of analyses, the ERC-funded study showed that as with the adults, most of the children found were also female.

This, and the killing of younger age groups that may be taken away as slaves, suggests this was more than a simple ambush and that targeting these people was meant to send a grisly message to their wider community, the researchers argue.

The findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour, provide fresh understanding to Iron Age conflict and sheds new light on how mass violence was used to assert power in prehistoric Europe.

Of the victims, 40 were children between the ages of one and twelve, 11 were adolescents, and 24 were adults – 87% of whom were female. The only infant discovered in the grave was male.

Unlike other mass burials of the period, the Gomolava site shows evidence of careful preparation with victims buried alongside personal possessions, including bronze jewellery and ceramic drinking vessels.

“It is typical in prehistoric mass graves for victims to be hastily buried together in a pit, maybe by survivors or even their killers. The victims at Gomolava were hastily buried in a disused semi-subterranean house, but uniquely, not only had the bodies not been looted of their valuables, offerings were made in what must have been a respectful ritual,” said Associate Professor Molloy.

Animal remains, such as a butchered calf, were also interred with them, while broken grain-grinding stones and burnt seeds were placed on top of the grave.

Such an investment of time and resources suggest the killings were followed by a deliberate and symbolic burial ceremony rather than a hurried attempt to dispose of the dead.

“The brutal killings and subsequent commemoration of the event can both be read as a powerful bid to balance power relations and assert dominance over land and resources,” said co-lead Dr Linda Fibiger, University of Edinburgh’s School of History, Classics and Archaeology.

Genetic testing showed the victims were not closely related, while isotopic data from teeth and bones showed diverse childhood diets pointing to the possibility that the women and children were from different settlements and were likely captured or forcibly displaced before being killed.

Researchers believe the mass-killing took place at an unsettled time when communities in the Carpathian Basin were establishing enclosed settlements and reoccupying Bronze Age settlement mounds and parts of mega-forts.

Building these forts and the claims they must have made on the land around them may have sparked conflict with other groups disputing territorial boundaries or potentially mobile pastoralists who sought to continue exploiting those same lands seasonally, they argue.

“Our team has been tracing the Bronze Age collapse and its aftermath in Europe. What we found at Gomolava tells us that as things recovered in this area moving into the Iron Age, reasserting control over landscapes could include widespread and extremely violent episodes between competing groups,” added Associate Professor Molloy.

This study was carried out by an international team co-led by University College Dublin, University of Edinburgh, the University of Copenhagen, and the Museum of Vojvodina, with contributions from institutions across Europe.

The research was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) grant “The Fall of 1200 BC” based at UCD School of Archaeology.

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Journal

Nature Human Behaviour

DOI

10.1038/s41562-025-02399-9 

Signs on Stone Age objects: Precursor to written language dates back 40,000 years

 

 

Caption

The Adorant figurine from Geißenklösterle Cave, approximately 38,000 years old, consists of a small ivory plate bearing an anthropomorphic figure and multiple sequences of notches and dots. The application of these marks suggests a notational system, most notably in the rows of dots on the back of the plate.

Credit

Credit: Landesmuseum Württemberg / Hendrik Zwietasch, CC BY 4.0

Over 40,000 years ago, our early ancestors were already carving signs into tools and sculptures. According to a new analysis by linguist Christian Bentz at Saarland University and archaeologist Ewa Dutkiewicz at the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte (Museum of Prehistory and Early History) in Berlin, these sign sequences have the same level of complexity and information density as the earliest proto-cuneiform script that emerged tens of thousands of years later, around 3,000 B.C.E. Using a computational approach, the team examined over 3,000 signs found on 260 objects to reveal insights on the origins of writing. Their findings, which will be published in the journal PNAS, were clear – and surprised even the researchers.

Palaeolithic objects dating back between 34,000 and 45,000 years bear mysterious sign sequences – often repeated lines, notches, dots and crosses. Many of these artefacts were discovered in caves in the Swabian Jura, such as a small mammoth found in the Vogelherd Cave in Lone Valley in south-western Germany. A Stone Age human carved the mammoth figurine out of a mammoth tusk and carefully engraved it with rows of crosses and dots. Other artefacts found in the Swabian Jura are also etched with signs. One of these objects is the 'Adorant', a mammoth ivory plate uncovered in the Geißenklösterle cave in the Ach Valley that depicts a hybrid lion-human creature. The object is likewise adorned with rows of dots and notches. Upon close inspection, another mythical depiction of a human-lion hybrid, the Lion Human from the Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave in the Lone Valley, reveals notches placed at regular intervals along the arm.

New findings show that these marks are there for a reason – Stone Age humans used them to convey information and to record their thoughts. 'Our research is helping us uncover the unique statistical properties – or statistical fingerprint – of these sign systems, which are an early predecessor to writing,' explains Professor Christian Bentz of Saarland University.

'The Swabian Jura is one of the regions where objects with this type of sign have been found most frequently, but there are, of course, other important regions. Countless tools and sculptures from the Palaeolithic, or the Old Stone Age, bear intentional sign sequences,' elaborates PhD archaeologist Ewa Dutkiewicz. The researchers travel together throughout Europe, visiting museums and archaeological sites to find new Stone Age signs. 'There are many sign sequences to be found on artefacts. We've only just scratched the surface,' says Dutkiewicz, who is a research associate and curator of the Stone Age department at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

'The artefacts date back to tens of thousands of years before the first writing systems, to the time when Homo sapiens left Africa, settled in Europe and encountered Neanderthals,' explains the archaeologist. In a project funded by the European Research Council, the two researchers and their team are examining how Stone Age humans encoded information in sign sequences.

Information density similar to that of proto-cuneiform

The researchers analysed more than 3,000 geometric signs found on around 260 objects using computational approaches. Their aim was not to uncover the concrete meaning of the signs, which have not been deciphered. 'There are plenty of theories, but until now there has been very little empirical work carried out on the basic, measurable characteristics of the signs,' explains Bentz. His research deals with frequency trends and tangible, measurable aspects of the signs. This allows him to see what the sign systems have in common with later systems – and how they differ. The linguist aims to leverage statistics to uncover insights on the origins of information encoding.

'Our analyses demonstrate that these sign sequences have nothing to do with the writing systems of today, which represent spoken languages and are characterized by high information density. In contrast, the signs on the archaeological objects are frequently repeated – cross, cross, cross, line, line, line. This type of repetition is not a feature found in spoken language,' explains Christian Bentz. 'However, our findings also show that Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers developed a system of symbols that has an information density that is statistically comparable to the earliest proto-cuneiform tablets from ancient Mesopotamia, which came 40,000 years later. Sign sequences in proto-cuneiform script are also repetitive and the individual signs are repeated at a similar rate. In terms of complexity, the sign sequences are comparable,' says Bentz. 'Figurines exhibit higher informational density than do tools,' reports archaeologist Dutkiewicz, who also used to curate the Vogelherd archaeological park in the Swabian Jura.

The researchers were particularly surprised by how the sign systems measured up to proto-cuneiform. 'We hypothesized that the early proto-cuneiform script would be more similar to the writing systems of today, especially due to their relative proximity in time. Yet the more we studied them, the clearer it became that the early proto-cuneiform script is very similar to the much older Palaeolithic sign sequences.' That also means that little changed between the Old Stone Age and the emergence of the first proto-cuneiform scripts. 'Then, about 5,000 years ago, a new system emerged relatively suddenly that represents spoken language. The new system therefore has completely different statistical characteristics,' explains Bentz.

Computational analysis of Palaeolithic signs

For their research, the team digitalizes the sign sequences on archaeological objects in a database, which they then use to assess statistical properties in the Stone Age sign inventories. Using computer-assisted methods, Bentz looked into the potential to express information using the signs and compared this to the potential allowed by early cuneiform sequences and by modern writing. In their analysis, the researchers applied approaches from quantitative linguistics such as statistical modelling and machine learning classification algorithms.

'Because of the high rate of repetitions and the high predictability of the next sign, we were able to show that the entropy – a measure of information density – is comparable to that of proto-cuneiform, which came much later,' explains Christian Bentz. 'The human ability to encode information in signs and symbols was developed over many thousands of years. Writing is only one specific form in a long series of sign systems,' Bentz elaborates. 'We continue to develop new systems for encoding information. Encoding is also the basis of computer systems.' Large language models, which are currently one of the most visible forms of AI, rely on the fact that language sequences are predictable, meaning the model is able to determine which part of a word is likely to come next.

Uncovering the encoding from the Stone Age

The study does not reveal what the Stone Age humans were trying to record with the signs. 'But the findings can help us to narrow down potential interpretations,' explains Ewa Dutkiewicz. While the humans of today can access thousands of years of information and knowledge transfer that the humans of then could not, anatomically speaking, Stone Age humans had already reached a similar stage of development as modern humans. This means they likely had similar cognitive abilities as we do. The ability to record and convey information to others was extremely important for Palaeolithic humans. It may have allowed them to coordinate groups or even helped them survive. 'They were highly skilled craftspeople. You are able to see that they carried the objects with them. A lot of the objects fit right in the palm of your hand. That is another way in which the objects are similar to proto-cuneiform tablets,' explains Ewa Dutkiewicz.

The research is a part of the project 'The Evolution of Visual Information Encoding' (EVINE), which is being funded by an ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council. Professor Christian Bentz joined Saarland University in 2025 and leads the EVINE research project. The project first began at the University of Tübingen and was then continued at the University of Passau at the Chair of Multilingual Computational Linguistics. Professor Bentz and Dr. Dutkiewicz examine how visual information encoding developed from the earliest signs to the writing of today. (ERC, EVINE, 101117111).
https://www.erc-evine.de/

Join the hunt for Stone Age signs on YouTube
Christian Bentz and Ewa Dutkiewicz travel across Europe, visiting museums and archaeological sites while searching for Stone Age signs. The duo documents their hunt on their YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/@StoneAgeSigns

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Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2520385123 

1.9 million year out-of-Africa migration wave leaves its mark in the Jordan Valley

A new study has determined that the archaeological site of ‘Ubeidiya in the Jordan Valley dates back at least 1.9 million years, pushing back evidence of early human presence in the region by hundreds of thousands of years and positioning the ‘Ubeidiya site, together with Dmanisi, Georgia, the oldest evidence of early humans outside of Africa. The discovery revises a critical moment in human evolution, indicating that ancient pioneers, equipped with a diverse array of stone tools, were established in the Levant at the dawn of our species’ global expansion.

A new study led by Prof. Ari Matmon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Prof. Omry Barzilai from the University of Haifa, and Prof. Miriam Belmaker from the University of Tulsa provides a clearer timeline for one of the most significant prehistoric sites worldwide for the study of human evolution. By integrating three advanced dating techniques, researchers have determined that the site of ‘Ubeidiya in the Jordan Valley likely dates back to at least 1.9 million years ago.

This revised age suggests that ‘Ubeidiya is among the oldest known sites of early humans outside of Africa.

The ‘Ubeidiya Formation has long interested researchers because it preserves early evidence of the Acheulean culture, characterized by large bifacial stone tools found in association with rich faunal assemblages, including species of African and Asian origin, some of which are now extinct.

However, establishing the site's exact age has been a challenge for decades. For many years, most researchers estimated that ‘Ubeidiya dated to between 1.2 and 1.6 million years ago but this age was based on relative chronology. To determine the precise age range of ‘Ubeidiya, the team returned to the site and resampled it using a battery of novel dating techniques, each offering a different way of probing the deep past.

One method, known as cosmogenic isotope burial dating, measures rare isotopes created when cosmic rays strike rocks at the Earth’s surface. Once those rocks are buried, the isotopes begin to decay at predictable rates, effectively starting a geological clock that reveals how long they have lain underground.

The scientists also examined traces of Earth’s ancient magnetic field preserved in the site’s lake sediments. As sediments settle, they lock in the direction of the planet’s magnetic field at that moment. By matching these magnetic signatures to known reversals in Earth’s history, the researchers determined that the layers formed during the Matuyama Chron, a period that began more than two million years ago.

Finally, the team analyzed fossilized Melanopsis shells, freshwater snails embedded in the sediment, using uranium-lead dating to establish a minimum age for the layers in which the stone tools were discovered.

 Altogether, the results converged on a significantly earlier date than previously assumed.

The findings indicate that the ‘Ubeidiya site is at least one million nine hundred thousand years old, representing a major shift in our understanding of early human history.

This new timeline suggests that ‘Ubeidiya is roughly the same age as the well-acknowledged Dmanisi site in Georgia, which means our ancestors were spreading across different regions at a similar time. It also suggests that two different technologies of making stone tools, the simpler Oldowan tradition and the more advanced Acheulean, migrated at the same time from Africa by the different groups of hominins as they moved into new territories.

The study also addressed a major scientific hurdle: the initial isotope readings suggested the rocks were 3 million years old, which contradicted paleomagnetic, paleontological, geological and archaeological evidence. The researchers addressed this hurdle by demonstrating that the sediments containing human remains have a long history of recycling within the Dead Sea rift and along its margins.

"The exposure-burial history that emerges from the model implies recycling of sediments previously deposited and buried in the rift valley... and then redeposited along the ‘Ubeidiya paleo lake shoreline."

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Journal

Quaternary Science Reviews

DOI

10.1016/j.quascirev.2026.109871  

Archaeologists identify elders in Iron Age Israel through household artifacts

 

New Bar-Ilan University research sheds light on the daily lives, status, and household roles of older adults more than 2,700 years ago -- a group long overlooked in archaeology

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Bar-Ilan University

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Building 101, on the eve of its destruction by the Assyrian army in the late 8th century BCE

 

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Credit: Vered Yacobi

A new study from Bar-Ilan University is shedding light on a long-overlooked social group in archaeology: the elderly. While research on women and children has flourished in recent decades, older adults have remained largely invisible, their lives reconstructed primarily through skeletal remains. Now, Bar-Ilan archaeologists present a new and innovative study, identifying the elderly through household artifacts, offering a fresh window into their daily lives and social roles.

The study, now accessible as FirstView in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, focuses on Building 101 at Tel ʿEton, located in the southeastern Shephelah, Israel. This large, high-quality residence, with its multiple rooms spanning the building’s two floors, was destroyed during an Assyrian military campaign in the late 8th century BCE, leaving hundreds of pottery vessels and additional artifacts sealed within the destruction debris, and providing an exceptionally detailed case study for understanding domestic life.

Using an innovative approach that combined analysis of artifacts, architectural features, activity areas, and comparative ethnographic perspectives on aging and household life, Prof. Avi Faust and his team reconstructed the lived experiences and social roles of older adults within the house. The building was the home of an extended family of some three generations. Room B, likely occupied by the household’s senior couple, had several unique qualities. It was the largest room in the building, the only room on the ground floor that was used for living and sleeping (rather than specialized activities like storage, cooking, etc.). The room’s location within the building is important for a number of reasons. First, the strategic location, opposite the entrance, enabled the residents to watch the entire courtyard and the entrances to the other rooms. Second, the fact that this was the only bedroom on the ground floor reflects the difficulty the elderly would have had climbing a ladder several times a day to reach the other sleeping quarters located on the second floor. The room contained various special finds, including a unique footbath, associated with entertaining important guests, and burnt cedar, perhaps the remains of an impressive chair. The patriarch, sitting on a large chair, could have watched comings and goings and entertained guests, whereas the matriarch could have overseen all household activities. Adjacent spaces, including a room for food preparation with a large loom, and a partially enclosed courtyard, were associated with the elder matriarch’s activities, such as childcare and weaving, highlighting her central role in daily domestic management.

The study advances beyond traditional methods of identifying the elderly, which rely almost exclusively on skeletal analysis in cemeteries. These conventional approaches are often limited, incomplete, or biased, especially in Iron Age Israel, where burial evidence is sparse and fragmentary. By contrast, this material-based approach exposes the elders within the domestic space, revealing their social status, influence, and integration within family and household structures, moving beyond chronological age to capture lived experience.

“For years, the elderly have remained largely invisible in archaeological research,” said Prof. Avi Faust, from the Department of General History at Bar-Ilan University, director of excavations at Tel ʿEton and author of the study. “By analyzing household artifacts rather than skeletal remains, we have a more effective way to identify elders and uncover their roles and influence within the family, a perspective archaeology has long overlooked.”

According to Faust the findings show that the elderly were not merely passive members of the household. Rather, they actively participated in managing resources, supervising domestic work, and maintaining family cohesion. The research underscores the potential of household archaeology to illuminate aspects of daily life that skeletal or textual data alone cannot capture.

This study marks a significant step in the archaeology of old age, opening a new avenue for identifying and understanding elders in other ancient societies. As Prof. Faust notes, "By meticulously examining small finds within domestic spaces, interpreting them in light of textual evidence and ethnographic data about the life of the elderly, we can give them the visibility they deserve in reconstructing past societies.”

H. erectus appeared in Yunxian, China 1.7 million years ago, about 600,000 years earlier than previous studies indicated

 What if Homo erectus (H. erectus), the direct ancestor of modern humans, arrived in China much earlier than we thought? New research published in Science Advances on February 18, may rewrite our understanding of early human dispersal in that area.

A study by a team of geoscientists and anthropologists, including corresponding author Christopher J. Bae from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Department of Anthropology in the College of Social Sciences, confirms that H. erectus appeared in Yunxian, China 1.7 million years ago, about 600,000 years earlier than previous studies indicated.

Prior to this study, which was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the U.S. National Science Foundation, the oldest Yunxian H. erectus fossils were reported to be about 1.1 million years old. The revised timeline reshapes one of the earliest chapters of human history, suggesting our ancestors spread across continents earlier—and possibly more successfully—than scientists once believed.

“While Homo erectus, our distant ancestor, is widely recognized to have originated in Africa before dispersing into Eurasia, the precise timeline of its arrival in eastern Asia was unknown,” said Bae. “Using the combination of the Yunxian H. erectus fossils and burial dating data, we have now been able to recreate a fairly robust dating reconstruction of when these hominins appeared in eastern Asia.”

Calculating burial data

The researchers used Aluminum-26 (Al-26) and Beryllium-10 (Be-10) burial dating to determine the age of the Yunxian fossils. Hua Tu, lead author, describes the method as using aluminum and beryllium isotopes in sediment from the same stratigraphic level as the fossils to determine when it was first buried and shielded from cosmic radiation. 

“Al-26 and Be-10 isotopes are produced when cosmic rays hit quartz minerals. Once buried deeply underground, isotope production stops and radioactive decay takes over. By using aluminum’s and beryllium’s known decay rates, and comparing the ratio of the two types of atoms left in sediment samples surrounding a fossil, researchers can calculate how long a fossil has been buried. This is key as traditional Carbon-14 dating is limited to the last 50,000 years while the Al-26/Be-10 method allows researchers to accurately date materials as far back as 5 million years ago,” said Tu, from the Institute of Marine Sciences, Shantou University and College of Geographical Sciences, Nanjing Normal University.

Bae added, “These findings challenge long-held assumptions regarding when the earliest hominins are thought to have moved out of Africa and into Asia. While these results are significant, the mystery of exactly when H. erectus first appeared and last appeared in the region remains. If H. erectus was not the earliest occupant to reach Asia, alternative species must be considered. The updated chronology for Yunxian is a critical step toward resolving these debates.”

In addition to Bae and Tu, other team members include:

• Xiaobo Feng: School of History and Culture, Shanxi University

• Lan Luo: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Purdue Rare Isotope Measurement Laboratory, Purdue University

• Zhongping Lai: Institute of Marine Sciences, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Marine Disaster Prediction and Prevention, Shantou University and Alpine Paleoecology and Human Adaptation Group (ALPHA), State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Environment and Resources, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences

• Darryl Granger: Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Purdue University

• Guanjun Shen: College of Geographical Sciences, Nanjing Normal University and Institute of Marine Sciences, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Marine Disaster Prediction and Prevention, Shantou University

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Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.ady2270 

New evidence pushes the origins of diseases closely related to syphilis back more than 5,000 years

 An article by Mississippi State Professor of Anthropology Molly Zuckerman and her graduate student Lydia Bailey has been published in Science, one of the foremost scientific journals in the world.

Zuckerman and Bailey’s piece examines new evidence from ancient DNA that pushes the origins of diseases closely related to syphilis back more than 5,000 years and strongly supports an American rather than European origin for a close relative of the disease. Drawing on recent paleogenomic discoveries from Colombia and Mexico, the article demonstrates how advances in ancient DNA research are transforming long-standing debates about human disease, evolution and global health. The article is available at www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.aee7963.

Zuckerman said the research is important because it “moves us further into understanding the origins and adaptability of a disease that is harmfully resurging in human populations, especially in the U.S., and thus its potential for future change.”

Zuckerman said her career was profoundly shaped by her graduate mentor who intentionally included her in research on the origins of syphilis. She said now her inclusion of Bailey in current research is “a meaningful way to pay that mentorship forward” by providing the same kind of hands-on, scholarly opportunity that once helped launch her own research path.

An applied anthropology master’s student from Lafayette, New Jersey, Bailey said her inclusion in the project highlights how examining infectious diseases “in deep time can inform how we think about the roles of human mobility, environment and behavior in shaping infectious disease spread today.” As she pursues a research career focused on children’s health and public policy, she said publishing in “Science” is especially significant because it allows the team to share these insights “beyond anthropology and into public conversations that can help destigmatize infectious disease,” ultimately supporting more informed and equitable public health efforts.

For more information about MSU’s College of Arts and Sciences and its Department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures, visit www.cas.msstate.edu and www.amec.msstate.edu.

Mississippi State University is taking care of what matters. Learn more at www.msstate.edu.

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.aee7963 

Family relationships identified in Stone Age graves on Gotland

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Uppsala University

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4. The 8-10-year-old girl placed stretched out on her back with a bone cluster that belongs to a young adult female who was a third-degree relative of the girl. Photo: Johan Norderäng

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Credit: Johan Norderäng

A woman was buried with two children, but they were not her own. In another grave, two children were placed. They were not siblings and were more distantly related, perhaps cousins. In a new study, researchers at Uppsala University have clarified family relationships in four graves from a 5,500-year-old hunter-gatherer culture at Ajvide on Gotland. DNA analyses suggest that the people were well aware of family lineages and that relationships beyond the immediate family played an important role.

Ajvide is one of the most important Stone Age sites in Scandinavia and is known for its well-preserved graves and rich archaeological finds. Around 5,500 years ago, hunter-gatherers lived there, supporting themselves primarily by hunting seals and fishing. By this time, agriculture had spread across Europe, but in the north, hunter-gatherer cultures persisted and remained genetically distinct from the farmers.

The large burial site contains 85 known graves. Among the findings here, eight graves have been discovered that hold two or more individuals. Researchers at Uppsala University have now analysed DNA from the remains that lay in four these shared graves to investigate the kinship between the individuals. 

“Surprisingly enough, the analysis showed that many of those who were buried together were second- or third-degree relatives, rather than first-degree relatives – in other words, parent and child or siblings – as is often assumed. This suggests that these people had a good knowledge of their family lineages and that relationships beyond the immediate family played an important role,” says archaeogeneticist Helena Malmström, who was responsible for the design of the study.

At least one child in most graves

In one of the graves, a 20-year-old woman was found lying on her back. Two children lay on either side of her, one of them was a four-year old and the other a one-and-a-half years old. The DNA analysis shows that the children – a boy and a girl – are full siblings, but that the woman is not their mother. She is most likely their father’s sister or their half-sister.

In the second grave, a young individual was discovered. Lying alongside were the remains of an adult man that had probably been moved to the grave from somewhere else. The analysis shows that the young person was a girl and that the man is her father.

In the third grave, two children – a boy and a girl, were buried together. Their relationship was a little more distant and was measured as third-degree, which likely means they were cousins.

In the fourth grave, there was a girl and a young woman. The analysis showed that they were third-degree relatives, with one of them probably being the other’s great-aunt or cousin.

“As it is unusual for these kinds of hunter-gatherer graves to be preserved, studies of kinship in archaeological hunter-gatherer cultures are scarce and typically limited in scale,” says population geneticist Tiina Mattila, who had lead responsibility for the genetic analyses.

“The analyses provide insight into social organisation in the Stone Age,” says Paul Wallin, Professor of Archaeology and an expert on the Ajvide burial ground.

The archaeogenetic analysis of the co-burials in Ajvide burial ground is the first pilot study exploring family relationships among Scandinavian Neolithic hunter-gatherers. The researchers will now continue with interdisciplinary studies of the remains of more than 70 individuals from the burial ground. In this way, they hope to learn more about the social structure, life histories and burial rites of the ancient hunter-gatherer cultures.

Facts: How sex and kinship were determined

The researchers were able to find out sex and kinship by analysing DNA from teeth and bones from the ten individuals. The children’s sex cannot be seen from the skeletons but could be determined by investigating whether the deceased had two X chromosomes (girl) or one X and one Y chromosome (boy). Kinship could be identified by looking at how large a proportion of the DNA the individuals share. Individuals who are first-degree relatives, such as parents and children or full siblings, share half of their DNA. Second-degree relatives, such as grandparents and grandchildren or half-siblings, share a quarter of their DNA. Cousins or great-grandparents and great-grandchildren are third-degree relatives and share an eighth of their DNA.

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Journal

Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences

DOI

10.1098/rspb.2025.0813