When archaeologists uncover adults and children buried together in medieval graves, a natural assumption is that they belonged to the same family. New research from Stockholm University, published in Science Advances, suggests that was often not the case. Scientists analyzed DNA from 142 people who lived during the late Viking Age and Middle Ages.
The group included more than 60 children and adolescents recovered from multiple graves at Sigtuna, near Stockholm, Västerhus in Jämtland, and Fjälkinge in Skåne. Shared Graves Were Often Not Family Graves The genetic evidence revealed that close biological relatives were surprisingly uncommon among people placed in the same grave. This was true even in cemeteries where researchers found many biological family connections among the wider population.
"We often assume that adults and children sharing a grave were parents and children or other close family members. In most cases, that was not what we found," says Maja Krzewińska, Centre for Palaeogenetics, Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies, Stockholm University, lead author of the study. The findings indicate that decisions about who was buried together were often shaped by more than close biological relationships.
Social, religious, or other community factors may also have played an important role. "Archaeologists have debated the relationships between people buried together in this type of grave for a long time. Ancient DNA has finally given us the tool we have been waiting for to test these interpretations directly," says Anna Kjellström, researcher at the Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies, Stockholm University.
The DNA analysis also provided new clues about childhood in early Christian Scandinavia. Ancient DNA allowed researchers to determine the biological sex of children whose remains were too young for sex to be identified reliably from their bones. The burial patterns showed that boys and girls often followed the same cemetery customs as adult men and women.
At Västerhus, for instance, men and women were generally buried on different sides of the churchyard. Boys and girls were placed according to that same pattern. The researchers say this suggests that gender identity was recognized from an early stage of life and was reflected in burial practices.
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