ANCIENT DNA SHEDS LIGHT INTO THE KINSHIP STRUCTURE OF EARLY 2ND MILLENNIUM BC TRZCINIEC CIRCLE GROUP
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2020-10-27

The early 2nd millennium BC is one of the most dynamic and transformative periods in the development of social structures in East-Central Europe. Major changes in cultural landscape of the period are defined by the rise of a phenomenon, known to the archaeological record as the Trzciniec Cultural Circle (TCC). It is thought that kinship and blood ties played an important role in a long-distance exchange and mobility of TCC people facilitating its spread and permanence. This view is supported by the assumption that individuals buried in collective burials, characteristic for TCC, were related and that burials themselves were meant to present the dead as members of a specific kin group. This hypothesis is based on various data including information supplied by physical anthropology. One of the main objectives of our project is to test this idea by applying the methods of contemporary archaeology, biology (genetics), anthropology and isotopic geochemistry. Here we present the initial results of ancient DNA (aDNA) study of four collective TCC burials from southern Poland. The data for relatedness estimates were generated using direct high throughput sequencing of genomic libraries, as well as capture based enrichment methods, targeting mitochondrial, Y-chromosome and nuclear markers in order to maximize the number of tested individuals. We tested several computational methods designed with low coverage genomic data in mind, in order to detect and confirm the 1st and 2nd degree kinship among the tested individuals. In our presentation we will compare the obtained results with the isotopic and anthropological data obtained for the same individuals in an attempt to reconstruct the most probable kinship and social structures of TCC groups. We will also discuss the possible role the proposed social organization could have played in the dissemination and perseverance of TCC in East-Central Europe for more than 600 years.


Author(s): Chylenski, Maciej (Institute of Archaeology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań) - Juras, Anna (Institute of Anthropology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań) - Makarowicz, Przemysław (Institute of Archaeology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań) - Pospieszny, Łukasz (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences) - Szczepanek, Anita (Department of Anatomy, Jagiellonian University in Krakow) - Górski, Jacek (Archaeological Museum of Kraków) - Taras, Halina (Institute of Archaeology, Maria
Curie Skłodowska University in Lublin)