Analysis of DNA from skeletons at a Stone Age cemetery in France revealed that most of the occupants were male and of the same lineage, according to a study published August 28 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The excavation site, located in a limestone cave in southern France, contained 75 mostly adult remains from the 5,000-year-old community at Aven de la Boucle. Archaeologists analyzed the genomes of 37 of these individuals and radiocarbon dated most of the bones found around the site.
Scientists found that 76% of the bodies buried there between 3,600 and 2,800 BC were male. Experts say this could indicate that social status was passed down from father to son and that women were much less likely to be buried there.
“Considering all this, [the] “Men in related relationships carry the same haplogroup (G2), which allowed us to hypothesize a patriarchal system,” said paleogeneticist Mélanie Pruvost, co-author of the study. Live Science“In other words, allegiance to a particular male lineage appears to be a dominant factor in accessing the collective grave.”
However, a few female bodies have still been exhumed from Aven de la Boucle, posing a dilemma for researchers. “Perhaps only a limited number of female individuals were allowed or chose to be included in the mass burial,” Pruvost suggested. Another possibility, he explained, is that “the bones of female individuals were preferentially removed from the cavity and moved elsewhere after decomposition had occurred.”
“As is often the case in prehistoric groups, women often left their ancestral communities to live with their reproductive partners in what we call a patrilocal residence system,” Pruvost continued. “We can assume, for example, that some female individuals would have preferred to return to their ancestral communities to be buried.”
Archaeologists are still working to understand the specific meaning of the burial site and why it was so important to the community. Ceramic artefacts and animal bones found scattered around the burial site could potentially have been used to “secure shrouds or clothing.”
“We can imagine that this place represented something important to the society, in terms of its location, its features, or perhaps the particular people buried there,” Pruvost said. “There could be a thousand different reasons for this choice, and it's very unlikely that archaeology will be able to separate them.”