Kinship and Residence Patterns in the Late Copper Age of Southern Germany:
A German-British network project
The official web site for this project is http://www.bellbeaker.de/.
Period
The Copper Age (c. 4500-2000 BC) is the critical transition stage in the development of more complex social organisation in Europe. By the 3rd millennium BC these communities had adopted a high level of social organisation, visible in the starting stratification of the society, and the conscious display of single individuals as a warrior elite, connected with increased international exchange.
Aim
The special situation of the Bell Beaker culture in southern Germany (2500-2200 BC) with its scarce settlements, but hundreds of inhumations, organized in cemeteries of up to 30 graves, is an unique opportunity for the reconstruction of both vertical and horizontal social organisation, mirrored in these cemeteries. For this social grouping, current research proposes a model of extended families, starting with a core of founding individuals. This expands to include relatives, as well as establishing the principle of primogeniture. This is enforced by extending social alliances and exchanges of objects, and through genetic exchange in the form of exogamous marriages. Such a model lies at the core of the social processes at the transition of Copper and Bronze Age Europe. Just here, structures are created which can be followed far into the Bronze and Iron Age, when some of these extended families raise themselves to aristocratic status, and institutionalise their new position. It is obvious that a demonstration of this hypothesis, based on archaeological science, is urgently needed.
Project setup
With this 2 year Anglo-German joint project approach (year 1 at UMIST & year 2 in Bristol; year 3 in Halle will be funded separatly), we would like to analyse the kinship and residence patterns within the two Bavarian Bell Beaker cemeteries of Irlbach, county Straubing-Bogen (24 graves) and Alburg-Lerchenhaid (18 graves), city county of Straubing. Both cemeteries offer ideal conditions for answering our research questions. They are only 12 km apart from each other close to the river Danube; completely excavated at the end of the 1980s and beginning 90s by modern methods; structurally identical; and contemporary in the younger Bell Beaker phase. They date to the 23th Century BC. Both cemeteries are fully available for the project.
Our proposal is created right from the beginning as an interdisciplinary project combining prehistoric archaeology (Halle; Munich; Bristol) with biomolecular chemistry (Manchester), osteology (Munich; Bristol), and different fields of the archaeological sciences (Freiberg; Bristol; Oxford). In particular, by extraction and sequence analysis of ancient mitochondrial DNA from the skeletons we will test between three hypotheses:
- an entire cemetery comprises a single extended family;
- an entire cemetery comprises more than one extended family; or
- there are no clear family relationships between the individuals in the cemetery.
Involved Institutions
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| University of Bristol | Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg | University of Manchester |
Funding
