Bronze Age: Daughters or Slaves? The mystery of women

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A wealthy nuclear family who lived under one roof with socially inferior people: as early as the Bronze Age and thus 4,000 years ago, there was apparently social inequality that persisted within a household for generations.

This is what researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Human History in Jena, the University of Tübingen and the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich (LMU) reported in the journal “Science” at the end of 2019.

Excavations in the Lech Valley south of Augsburg paint the picture of a society with a complex social structure in which property and status were inherited.

So far, scientists can only speculate about the exact role of the socially inferior household members.

For the study, the team led by human geneticist Alissa Mittnik and archaeologists Philipp Stockhammer and Johannes Krause analyzed remains from Bronze Age burial grounds in the Bavarian Lech Valley.

For Central Europe, the Bronze Age is the period between 2200 and 800 BC.

In the epoch that followed the Stone Age, people acquired the ability to cast bronze - with far-reaching consequences for the societies of that time, their mobility and economy.

A high-ranking, non-local women's grave from Haunstetten

Source: Stadtarchäologie Augsburg

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The scientists examined not only the grave goods, but also genetic data of 104 individuals to determine the relationships.

The combined archaeological and archaeogenetic findings allow the researchers a deep insight into the coexistence at that time.

Hierarchies within a household

“Wealth correlated with either biological kinship or ancestry from afar.

The nuclear family passed on their property and status, ”explains Stockhammer from LMU.

“But in every farm we also found poorly equipped people of local origin.” Such complex structures of living together are known from ancient Rome and classical Greece.

However, the people in the Lechtal lived more than 1500 years earlier.

"This shows for the first time how long the history of social inequality in family structures goes back."

The fact that hierarchical structures developed in the Bronze Age is nothing new.

What was surprising for the archaeologists, however, was that these hierarchies existed within a household and that over generations.

The scientists were able to read off the social status of the deceased from the respective grave goods.

For men of higher social rank in the Lech Valley, these were mainly weapons such as daggers, axes or arrowheads, for women of high social rank elaborate headdresses or large leg rings.

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Such gifts were only given to closely related family members and women who came to the family from 400 to 600 kilometers away.

In an earlier study, the researchers had already shown that the majority of women in the Lechtal came from abroad and therefore probably played a decisive role in the transfer of knowledge.

The current investigation fits this finding.

The genetic analyzes made it possible to create family trees that spanned four to five generations - and only contained male lineages.

For the archaeologists, this means that the female descendants had to leave the farm when they reached adulthood.

The mothers of the sons, however, were exclusively women who had moved there.

Selection of grave goods from the early Bronze Age burial ground in Kleinaitingen, including daggers and parts of female headdresses

Source: K. Massy

“Archaeogenetics gives us a completely new look into the past.

Until recently, we would not have thought it possible that we would be able to investigate marriage rules, social structure and inequality in the past, ”says Johannes Krause, Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Man in Jena.

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In addition to the richly buried members of the respective nuclear family, the scientists also found poorly buried, unrelated native members in the households.

"Unfortunately, we cannot say whether these individuals were servants and maidservants or perhaps even a type of slave," explains Alissa Mittnik of Harvard Medical School in Boston.

It is certain that the farms were inherited over many generations via the male lines and that this system was stable for over 700 years.

"The Lechtal shows how deep the history of social inequality within individual households actually goes back into the past."

This article was first published on October 13, 2019.