A different kind of stones

Reference 1 is about using DNA analysis to recover the relationships between the around thirty people buried in a long barrow in Gloucestershire. A paper which hit the press recently and which can be read at reference 2. With plenty of deep background on the long barrow in question to be found at reference 3. With such knowledge as I have about ancient DNA being what I can remember of reference 5, which I was looking at just about three years ago now.

A few points of interest follow.

The long barrow might well be long and might well be cellular in construction, but, in this case at least, the actual burial chambers are in two relatively narrow strips across the middle, one coming in from each side, north and south. In white at (a) above. Detailed at (b).

A barrow which dates from getting on for 6,000 years ago.

Of the order of 30 people are buried in it, spanning five generations. With the alpha male in black at the top of the heap. Buried at the bottom of the north passage, more or less in the middle of the barrow.

A lot of meat and some dairy in their diets when alive.

Using ground up teeth and bones and some clever chemistry, the authors have recovered DNA from 25 other people, all fairly closely related to the alpha male, by partnership or otherwise. An alpha male for whom DNA from three partners have been recovered and for whom a fourth partner (far right) is inferred. 15 other related people have been inferred. DNA for eight non related people has been recovered, shown bottom middle at (c) above.

The story offered is that this was a patriarchal society and in so far as married women were included in these burials, they were included with their partners. Maybe males stayed put in their natal villages while females married outside their natal villages. Some of the people included were step children. Those unrelated may have been adopted into the family.

The paper notes that: '... associations between patrilineal descent, virilocality, polygyny and cattle husbandry [have been] documented in ethnographically diverse cultures...'.

A huge leap forward from the uncertain carbon dating of my youth, all that was available in the way of science at that time.

PS: we get some statistics with our stones. The word 'Bayes' is there, albeit just the once, and there are half a dozen P values, rather small ones. Let's hope the authors have done their statistical homework, unlike the present writer.

References

Reference 1: A high-resolution picture of kinship practices in an Early Neolithic tomb - Chris Fowler and others – 2021. Paywalled.

Reference 2: https://rdcu.be/cDHXF. A read only version of reference 1. The source of the snap above.

Reference 3: Hazleton North, Gloucestershire, 1979–82: The Excavation of A Neolithic Long Cairn of the Cotswold-Severn Group - Alan Saville, with the assistance of Elizabeth Hall and Jon Hoyle and with numerous specialist contributions - 1990. 281 pages with 116 illustrations. Paywalled.

Reference 4: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8xI9BAAAQBAJ. A 50 page preview of reference 3.

Reference 5: Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the new science of the human past - David Reich – 2018.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/search?q=reich.