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 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.
Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UU, United Kingdom. r.a.bentley@bristol.ac.uk
R Alexander
RA
Bentley
Penny
P
Bickle
Linda
L
Fibiger
Geoff M
GM
Nowell
Christopher W
CW
Dale
Robert E M
RE
Hedges
Julie
J
Hamilton
Joachim
J
Wahl
Michael
M
Francken
Gisela
G
Grupe
Eva
E
Lenneis
Maria
M
Teschler-Nicola
Rose-Marie
RM
Arbogast
Daniela
D
Hofmann
Alasdair
A
Whittle
D000383:Agriculture; D005060:Europe; D005190:Family; D005260:Female; D005843:Geography; D049690:History, Ancient; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male