Using ancient DNA and archaeological evidence to unravel the kinship, social practices and transformations of early medieval steppe groups in Europe
Date:
April 24, 2024
Source:
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Summary:
A multidisciplinary research team has combined ancient DNA data with a clear archaeological, anthropological and historical context to reconstruct the social dynamics of Avar-period steppe descent populations that settled in Europe's Carpathian Basin in the 6th century.
A multidisciplinary research team led by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has combined ancient DNA data
with a clear archaeological, anthropological and historical context to reconstruct the social dynamics of Avar-period steppe descent populations that settled in Europe's Carpathian Basin in the 6th century. The study involved analysing entire communities by sampling all available human remains from four fully excavated Avar-era cemeteries, analysing a total of 424 individuals and discovering that around 300 had a close relative buried in the same cemetery.
This allowed the reconstruction of several extensive pedigrees, revealing that the communities practised a strict patrilineal system of descent. Women played a key role in promoting social cohesion, linking individual communities by marrying outside their original community. Changes within a site indicated community replacement, probably linked to political changes, showing that genetic continuity at the level of ancestry can mask the replacement of whole communities, with important implications for future archaeological and genetic research.
The Avars, who had come from Eastern Central Asia, ruled much of Eastern Central Europe for a quarter millennium, from the 6th to the 9th century CE. They may be less known than their less successful predecessors, the Huns. Yet in their cemeteries, they left one of the richest archaeological heritages in European history, including around 100,000 graves that have so far been excavated. From Avar funeral customs, and from written reports of their neighbours, scholars have reconstructed some of their social practices and ways of life. Yet now, archaeogenetics offer a totally new viewpoint on Avar communities who lived more than 1000 years ago. We can now analyse the ways in which individuals were related to each other up to the sixth to tenth degree.
By combining newly generated ancient DNA data with complementary archaeological, anthropological and historical information, a team of the multidisciplinary Synergy Grant research project HistoGenes funded by the European Research Council (ERC) has thus opened new ways to find out more about kinship patterns, social practices and population development in the distant past. The team includes researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, together with Hungarian, Austrian and US research groups. In their collaboration, they set new standards by using all available methods, including the most advanced genetic and bio-informatic tools.
More:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/04/240424111518.htm
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