Contextualizing descent in Neolithic northern Europe

This article explores the role that co-locating the bodies of people who were connected by patrilineal descent at burial grounds played within broader fields of Neolithic kinship relations, using three case studies: a cemetery at Gurgy 'les Noisats' (France), a chambered tomb at Hazleton North (England), and a passage tomb at Frälsegården (Sweden). The article argues that lineal descent forms a particularly bright thread in the wider fabric of kinship – a thread that is especially visible using archaeogenetic methods – and that we need to contextualize this thread within the wider weave of Neolithic kinship. It suggests that we should avoid seeking to pigeon-hole Neolithic communities into distinct categories of kinship systems, arguing that we are better served by focussing on the individual strands of kinship practice that we can detect and thinking about (a) how they were interwoven and (b) how they changed over time. In this way, we can best describe the fabric of kinship without falling back on universalising and reductionist categories of kinship systems. The changing relationships between lines of kin and tomb space, the presence of half-siblings, affines, maternal descent clusters, and potential elective kin – including biologically unrelated individuals who were folded into the fabric of kinship – that are visible in the three case studies attest to the messy, dynamic, contingent reality of Neolithic kinship. Finally, the article examines the limitation and challenges involved in drawing conclusions about parenting and social and political organization from the archaeogenetic evidence that is currently available, while encouraging further studies combining aDNA, isotope analysis, and conventional archaeological (including bioarchaeological) analyses.