Archaeologists shed new light on wealth and status among Europe's early herders

How unequal were prehistoric societies? And how can archaeologists measure wealth in cultures that left behind no written records, no tax registers and no census data?

A researcher from the University of Copenhagen has developed a multi-proxy method called QuantWealth that uses archaeological evidence from graves to reconstruct social status, wealth display, and inequality thousands of years ago.

In a new study published in Journal of Neolithic Archaeology, the method was applied to almost 300 4-5,000-year-old graves in present-day Bohemia. The researchers compared the analyses of the graves with genetic ancestry and Y-chromosome patterns of the skeletal remains to track paternal lineages, including pathologies, age, and gender to give unprecedented detail to the story of the so-called Corded Ware culture.

The researchers found that social inequality emerged gradually in Bohemia over several centuries following migrations from the steppe. These migrations spread early Indo-European dialects across Europe, but, at least in Bohemia, inequality was not deeply entrenched:

"Archaeologists have long debated whether steppe populations migrating across Europe from Ukraine brought with them a highly unequal social system and patriarchy. Our results suggest a much more dynamic picture, where social differences developed gradually. Achieving status through life-actions appears to have been more important than through inheritance, at least during the first 400 years", says University of Copenhagen archaeologist Mikkel Nørtoft, main author of the study, who developed the QuantWealth method in his PhD thesis.

A society in transition
Mikkel Nørtoft and his colleague Adam B. Rohrlach analysed 296 burials from the Corded Ware culture in Bohemia dating between approximately 2,900 and 2,300 BCE.

“Following a few harsh years of “dark sun” clouded by a devastating volcanic eruption 2,900 BCE, the earliest herder communities, settling in Bohemia around 2,900-2,700 BCE, seem to have focused mostly on building social cohesion across this new network of migrants in Central Europe. In Bohemia, they did this through shared burial rituals, and building earthen mounds, but with few grave goods”, Mikkel Nørtoft explains.

Wealth differences were small, mostly age-related, and power seems to have been distributed across multiple steppe-derived lineages, with little gender inequality.

Increased competition and inequality
Over time, circa 2,700-2,500 BCE, however, funerary competition in Bohemia intensified after a new lineage appeared. The researchers found increasing concentrations of prestige items, meat offerings, expanding exchange networks, and growing gender inequality. Adult men in particular became associated with more richly furnished graves, and younger adults became most frequent in the graves, but without clearly increasing signs of violence in skeletal trauma.

“In the final phase, roughly 2,500-2,300 BCE, we see a few rich displays of family wealth through children, and the previously new lineage now dominated the burial record. So maybe the new lineage had gained the most followers and power through the competitive burial parties, and their descendants were now competing among themselves”, Mikkel Nørtoft points out and adds:

“The few rich child graves and this prevailing lineage could indicate more inherited wealth and emerging traits of persistent inequality. Ethnographic parallels could also support the idea that parents adorned their children with ornaments to increase their social value in future marriage exchange. Brides often moved into the husband’s household in Corded Ware societies, and bridewealth or dowry is preserved in early Indo-European vocabulary, and historically common in Indo-European societies.”

This could be exemplified in one particularly rich female child grave in this late phase from the site Čachovice, the richest among all Bohemian graves in the study. This grave also included an extremely rare copper neck ring, a widespread upper-class symbol (known as “torcs”) in the later European Bronze and Iron Ages.

According to the researchers, these developments suggest growing social competition and the possible emergence of more durable forms of inequality among late Corded Ware communities.

Whether this development shows the first small steps to long-standing family dynasties documented later in the Bronze Age will require more data on both the Corded Ware Culture and the related Bell Beaker Culture who replaced them in Central Europe.

“We now have a correlation between changing Y-haplogroup lineages and unequal burial wealth display in one region, but we need more DNA data to confirm this at the family level, and elsewhere”, explains Nørtoft. The study also shows how combining DNA, archaeology, and language can enrich narratives about social changes in the past.

The study “Cooperation and Competition: Changes in Wealth, Power, and Patrilines in the Czech Corded Ware Culture” has been published in Journal of Neolithic Archaeology.
 

Contact
Archaeologist postdoc Mikkel Nørtoft
University of Copenhagen and National Museum of Denmark
Email: mnoertoft@palaeome.org

Geneticist postdoc Adam B. Rohrlach
Department of Archaeogenetics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
E-mail: adam.rohrlach@adelaide.edu.au

The research was funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark and the European Research Council.

 

About QuantWealth
The QuantWealth method addresses a longstanding challenge in archaeology: how do researchers compare wealth and status across large numbers of prehistoric burials.

Instead of simply counting grave goods, which has been the preferred method, QuantWealth combines multiple indicators associated with social investment and prestige. These include the number and exclusivity of grave goods, the labour required to produce them, access to long-distance exchange networks, evidence of feasting and the effort invested in constructing graves.

Together, these factors allow researchers to estimate how wealth and status were expressed within ancient communities.

The researchers then combine these archaeological indicators with advanced statistical analyses to map patterns of wealth and social differentiation through time.

The Corded Ware Culture
The Corded Ware Culture was one of the most widespread archaeological cultures of prehistoric Europe, spanning large parts of northern, central and eastern Europe between approximately 2900 and 2300 BCE. It is named after the distinctive pottery decorated with impressions made by twisted cords.

Corded Ware communities practiced a mixed economy based on animal husbandry, farming, and are associated with the spread of people carrying ancestry from the East European steppe and the spread of Indo-European languages across Eurasia.

Individual burials with characteristic grave goods, such as “battle-axes” in male graves, cord-decorated beakers and amphoras, and dogtooth ornaments in female graves, are a hallmark of the culture.

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