Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T05:06:16.953Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ancient DNA, kinship and relational identities in Bronze Age Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2021

Joanna Brück Open the ORCID record for Joanna Brück [Opens in a new window]
Joanna Brück*
Affiliation:
School of Archaeology, University College Dublin, Ireland (✉ [email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Recent critiques of ancient DNA (aDNA) studies in archaeology have called into question the problematic conflation of genetics with ethnic, cultural and racial identity. As yet, however, there has been little discussion of the increasing use of aDNA to reconstruct prehistoric kinship systems. This article draws on anthropological research to argue that kinship relations are not determined by biogenetic links, but are generated through social practice. A variety of archaeological evidence can be employed to explore how enduring affective relationships are created with both human and non-human others. These points require us to challenge androcentric and heteronormative interpretations of aDNA data in the Bronze Age and more widely.

Keywords

prehistoryancient DNAkinshipbiogenetic determinismrelationality
Type
Debate
Information
Antiquity , Volume 95 , Issue 379 , February 2021 , pp. 228 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Antiquity Publications Ltd

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allan, A., Rault, S. & Humble, J.. 2007. Barrow 5, built before 2140–1880 cal BC (SS1.16), in Harding, J. & Healy, F. (ed.) The Raunds Area Project: a Neolithic and Bronze Age landscape in Northamptonshire: 141–47. London: English Heritage.Google Scholar
Andrews, P. & Thompson, S.. 2016. An Early Beaker funerary monument at Porton Down, Wiltshire. Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine 109: 71–74.Google Scholar
Berndt, R. & Berndt, C.. 1989. The speaking land: myth and story in Aboriginal Australia. Ringwood: Penguin.Google Scholar
Booth, T. & Brück, J.. 2020. Death is not the end: radiocarbon and histo-taphonomic evidence for the curation and excarnation of human remains in Bronze Age Britain. Antiquity 94: 1186–203. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2020.152CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bracewell, W. 2016. Ritual brotherhood across frontiers in the Eastern Adriatic hinterland, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. History and Anthropology 27: 338–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2016.1155990CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brück, J. 2019. Personifying prehistory: relational ontologies in Bronze Age Britain and Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Busby, C. 1997. Of marriage and marriageability: gender and Dravidian kinship. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 3: 261–78. https://doi.org/10.2307/3034363CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, B. 2005. On ‘loving your water buffalo more than your own mother’: relationships of animal and human care in Nepal, in Knight, J. (ed.) Animals in person: cultural perspectives on human-animal intimacy: 79–100. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Carlin, N. 2018. The Beaker phenomenon? Understanding the character and context of social practices in Ireland 2500–2000 BC. Leiden: Sidestone.Google Scholar
Carsten, J. 1997. The heat of the hearth: the process of kinship in a Malay fishing community. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Cormier, L. 2003. Kinship with monkeys: the Guajá foragers of Eastern Amazonia. New York: Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/corm12524CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Costa, L. 2017. The owners of kinship: asymmetrical relations in indigenous Amazonia. Chicago (IL): Hau.Google Scholar
Crellin, R. & Harris, O.. 2020. Beyond binaries: interrogating ancient DNA. Archaeological Dialogues 27: 37–56. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203820000082CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans-Pritchard, E. 1951. Kinship and marriage amongst the Nuer. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fortes, M. 1949. Time and social structure: an Ashanti case study, in Fortes, M. (ed.) Social structure: 54–84. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Franklin, S. 1997. Embodied progress: a cultural account of assisted reproduction. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Frieman, C.J. & Hofmann, D.. 2019. Present pasts in the archaeology of genetics, identity, and migration in Europe: a critical essay. World Archaeology 51: 528–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2019.1627907CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frieman, C.J., Teather, A. & Morgan, C.. 2019. Bodies in motion: narratives and counter narratives of gendered mobility in European later prehistory. Norwegian Archaeological Review 52: 148–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/00293652.2019.1697355CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Furholt, M. 2018. Massive migrations? The impact of recent aDNA studies on our view of third millennium Europe. European Journal of Archaeology 21: 159–91. https://doi.org/10.1017/eaa.2017.43CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haak, W. et al. 2008. Ancient DNA, strontium isotopes, and osteological analyses shed light on social and kinship organization of the Later Stone Age. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 105: 18226–31. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0807592105CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hakenbeck, S.E. 2019. Genetics, archaeology and the far right: an unholy trinity. World Archaeology 51: 517–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2019.1617189CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Held, D. 1957. The Papuans of Waropen. The Hague: Nijhoff. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-5928-1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holý, L. 1996. Anthropological perspectives on kinship. London: Pluto.Google Scholar
Kahn, S. 2000. Reproducing Jews: a cultural account of assisted conception in Israel. Durham (NC): Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822378204CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kimmerer, R.W. 2013. Braiding sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions.Google Scholar
Kristiansen, K. 2014. Towards a new paradigm? The third science revolution and its possible consequences in archaeology. Current Swedish Archaeology 22: 11–34.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, C. 1963. Totemism. Boston (MA): Beacon.Google Scholar
Levine, N.E. 2008. Alternative kinship, marriage and reproduction. Annual Review of Anthropology 37: 275–89. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.37.081407.085120CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malinowski, B. 1929. The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Mittnik, A. et al. 2019. Kinship-based social inequality in Bronze Age Europe. Science 366: 731–34. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aax6219CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mortimer, J.R. 1905. Forty years’ researches in British and Saxon burial mounds of East Yorkshire. London: A. Brown & Sons.Google Scholar
Olalde, I. et al. 2018. The Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of Northwest Europe. Nature 555: 190–96. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature25738CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Perkins, D. 1995. An assessment/research design: South Dumpton Down, Broadstairs. Canterbury: Trust for Thanet Archaeology (unpublished report).Google Scholar
Scheffler, H. 1964. Descent concepts and descent groups: the Maori case. Journal of the Polynesian Society 73: 126–33.Google Scholar
Schneider, D. 1984. A critique of the study of kinship. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.7203CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sjögren, K.-G. et al. 2020. Kinship and social organization in Copper Age Europe: a cross-disciplinary analysis of archaeology, DNA, isotopes, and anthropology from two Bell Beaker cemeteries. https://doi.org/10.1101/863944CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, A. 2005. Conquest: sexual violence and American Indian genocide. Durham (NC): Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoler, A.L. 2002. Carnal knowledge and imperial power: race and the intimate in colonial rule. Berkeley: University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520927742CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stone, L. 2010. Kinship and gender: an introduction. Philadelphia (PA): Westview.Google Scholar
TallBear, K. 2018. Making love and relations beyond settler sexuality, in Haraway, D. & Clark, A. (ed.) Make kin, not babies: 145–64. Chicago (IL): Prickly Paradigm.Google Scholar
Vilaça, A. 2002. Making kin out of others in Amazonia. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 8: 347–65. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.00007CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weston, K. 1991. Families we choose: lesbians, gays, kinship. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar