Community differentiation and kinship among Europe’s first farmers

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 signific...

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Published inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 109; no. 24; pp. 9326 - 9330
Main Authors Bentley, R. Alexander, Bickle, Penny, Fibiger, Linda, Nowell, Geoff M, Dale, Christopher W, Hedges, Robert E. M, Hamilton, Julie, Wahl, Joachim, Francken, Michael, Grupe, Gisela, Lenneis, Eva, Teschler-Nicola, Maria, Arbogast, Rose-Marie, Hofmann, Daniela, Whittle, Alasdair
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States National Academy of Sciences 12.06.2012
National Acad Sciences
Subjects
Adzes
Agriculture
Community
Crops
Europe
Family
Farmers
Female
females
Geography
History, Ancient
Human genetics
Humans
Isotopes
kinship
Land use
Loess
Loess soils
Male
males
Signatures
Skeleton
Social Sciences
Statistical variance
strontium
Strontium isotopes
Tooth enamel
variance
Central European region
Europe
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Summary: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.
Bibliography:http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1113710109
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Author contributions: R.A.B., R.E.M.H., D.H., and A.W. designed research; R.A.B., P.B., L.F., G.M.N., C.W.D., and J.H. performed research; J.W., M.F., G.G., E.L., M.T.-N., and R.-M.A. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; R.A.B., P.B., G.M.N., and C.W.D. analyzed data; and R.A.B., P.B., G.M.N., and A.W. wrote the paper.
Edited by Stephen J. Shennan, University College London, London, United Kingdom, and accepted by the Editorial Board April 24, 2012 (received for review September 2, 2011)
2Present Address: School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9AG, United Kingdom.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1113710109