Kinship as a foundation of human society

We start with the deep prehistory of kinship as matricentric, which requires the consideration of hominin evolution (e.g. Hrdy Reference Hrdy2009). Among hominins, increases in brain size and social complexity likely paralleled a long developmental childhood and extended lifespan (Chapais Reference Chapais2014; Hill et al. Reference Hill, Walker and Božičević2011). Since humans evolved as a highly cooperative species (e.g. Hrdy Reference Hrdy2009), further developments enhanced the ‘survival of the friendliest’ among human groups (Hare Reference Hare2017). Over the past 80,000 years, reductions in human testosterone levels and increases in serotonin—suggested by cranial ‘feminization’ in fossil records—indicate behavioural shifts toward reduced aggression, heightened social tolerance and greater cooperation (Cieri et al. Reference Cieri, Churchill, Franciscus, Tan and Hare2014; Raghanti et al. Reference Raghanti, Stephenson and Munger2018).

Pre-agricultural kinship systems likely coevolved with hormonal and behavioural adaptations that supported cooperative breeding—the shared provisioning and care of offspring. These adaptations included reduced aggression and enhanced nurturance, mediated by lower testosterone and higher oxytocin levels, respectively (Bribiescas et al. Reference Bribiescas, Ellison and Gray2012; Hrdy Reference Hrdy2009). For example, men with partners and children often show reduced testosterone levels (Gettler et al. Reference Gettler, McDade and Feranil2011; Gray Reference Gray2011). According to life history theory, the advent of agriculture may have shifted energy allocation away from intensive parental investment in individual children and toward increased reproduction and defence (Wells & Stock Reference Wells and Stock2020). This investment shift from offspring quality to quantity likely favoured patrilineal inheritance systems (e.g. Borgerhoff Mulder Reference Borgerhoff Mulder1998; Goodman et al. Reference Goodman, Koupil and Lawson2012; Holden et al. Reference Holden, Sear and Mace2003; Shennan Reference Shennan2011).

Kinship behaviours allowed hominins to adapt to diverse and challenging environments by structuring cooperation within and between social groups through social conventions and rituals. Early hominin social organization was likely matricentric, with ancestral structures centred on mothers and their kin. This arrangement reflects the vital role of alloparenting—non-parental assistance in infant care—as a key strategy for provisioning and supporting offspring (Hrdy Reference Hrdy2009; Perry & Daly Reference Perry and Daly2017; Sear & Mace Reference Sear and Mace2008; Wu et al. Reference Wu, He and Deng2013). The mother’s kin enhanced the survival of offspring in whom mothers were highly invested (Du & Mace Reference Du and Mace2019; Hawkes Reference Hawkes2004; Mace Reference Mace2013; Shenk et al. Reference Shenk, Begley, Nolin and Swiatek2019). The evolution of post-menopausal longevity in humans, which allows post-reproductive grandmothers to assist their daughters and granddaughters, is proposed as an evolutionary outcome of kin-based cooperation on inclusive fitness (Apicella & Silk Reference Apicella and Silk2019; Hawkes Reference Hawkes2004), even as new evidence for menopause in chimpanzees (Wood et al. Reference Wood, Negrey and Brown2023) somewhat complicates the grandmother hypothesis for early hominins, as it suggests menopause may be a conserved trait. Exchange networks involving extended kin groups were crucial for hominin survival at low population densities, fostering indirect reciprocity via second- and third-degree contacts (Chapais Reference Chapais2014; Hrdy Reference Hrdy2009; Tomasello Reference Tomasello2019).

Conditions that promote matriliny in humans—such as low paternity certainty and the absence of material wealth—are also characteristic of other primates. As a result, social bonds in primate societies generally favour matrilineal kin (Thompson Reference Thompson2019), unrelated females form affiliative associations (Langergraber et al. Reference Langergraber, Mitani and Vigilant2013) and gorillas even seek out old female friends after years apart (Martignac et al. Reference Martignac, Eckardt and Mucyo2025).

The shift from female-biased kinship systems, prevalent among early humans and other mammals (Hrdy Reference Hrdy2009; Mattison et al. Reference Mattison, Shenk, Thompson, Borgerhoff Mulder and Fortunato2019), to the emergence of patriliny was a marked departure that happened in certain regions of the Neolithic world. One of these regions was Europe. Out of 1291 recorded populations in the Ethnographic Atlas, 160 are matrilineal, 590 patrilineal and 362 bilateral, yet none in Europe are matrilineal (Surowiec et al. Reference Surowiec, Snyder and Creanza2019). This lack of variation contrasts sharply with the global diversity of kinship systems, where matrilineal practices have been common in many non-European societies (e.g. Dong et al. Reference Dong, Li and Luan2015; Kennett et al. Reference Kennett, Plog and George2017; Shenk et al. Reference Shenk, Begley, Nolin and Swiatek2019; Surowiec et al. Reference Surowiec, Snyder and Creanza2019; Wang et al. Reference Wang, Yan and Li2025). Understanding the emergence of patrilineal systems in continental Europe is all the more useful when those developments are contrasted with East Asia, the Americas and Africa during the spread of farming on those continents and the subsequent rise of complex societies and hereditary inequality (Kohler et al. Reference Kohler, Smith and Bogaard2017). Here we focus on Europe not as the standard, but as an exceptional case that provides a valuable comparison to other parts of the world in the prehistory of kinship.

In our discussion below, we use the term exogamy here to refer broadly to marriage outside the primary descent group—whether lineage, clan, or household. Exogamy implies a social rather than spatial boundary, and so could involve only short-range movement within a community network. Archaeologically, assuming such individuals would often have similar biogeographic signatures, isotopic methods would likely underestimate the number of migrants (e.g. Bentley Reference Bentley2006). Genetically, however, exogamy could be identified at a closer scale through aDNA.

Archaeologically, our use of unilineal kinship terms—such as patrilineal, patrilocal, matrilineal and matrilocal—is necessarily coarse-grained, inferred from archaeobiological indicators such as isotopic signatures and ancient DNA. Ethnographic evidence, however, shows that kinship systems were likely far more variable (e.g. Ember Reference Ember2011; Ensor et al. Reference Ensor, Irish and Keegan2017). Patrilineal descent is typically associated with female exogamy, in which marriage alliances link groups (Fox Reference Fox1984; Lévi-Strauss Reference Lévi-Strauss1949), but patrilineal systems themselves vary widely. Some involve strict virilocal residence and skewed male reproductive success, while others—especially among small-scale farming communities—exhibit more equitable reproductive patterns and flexible inheritance. Even under matriliny, men may acquire land or status through their wives or retain rights within their natal descent group. Both sexes may relocate at marriage, and in some cases men reside with their wives’ families. In matrilocal systems where land is passed through daughters, men often lose ties to their natal groups and pursue mobile livelihoods such as hunting or trading. In both descent systems, land inheritance strongly shapes mobility: inheritors tend to stay, while non-inheritors are more likely to move. Broader cross-cultural patterns link kinship organization with modes of subsistence: in pre-industrial societies, matriliny is more common among horticulturalists, while patriliny tends to accompany intensive animal husbandry, agriculture and the accumulation of inheritable wealth (Goodman et al. Reference Goodman, Koupil and Lawson2012; Holden et al. Reference Holden, Sear and Mace2003; Mace Reference Mace2013; Shennan Reference Shennan2011).

Çatalhöyük: before patriliny

The remarkable diversity of kinship systems observed in recent centuries reflects millennia of cultural inheritance, adaptation and diversification (Bentley Reference Bentley2022; Moravec et al. Reference Moravec, Atkinson, Bowern, Greenhill and Jordan2018; Surowiec et al. Reference Surowiec, Snyder and Creanza2019). Because the archaeology in Europe has been so extensively studied, the evidence for patrilineal kinship in prehistoric Europe should not be taken as evidence for this form of kinship in any other time or place. As Ruth Mace (Reference Mace2022) put it, ‘Contrary to common belief, research shows that the patriarchy isn’t some kind of “natural order of things”—it hasn’t always been prevalent and may in fact disappear eventually…. And female leaders and matriarchal societies have always existed.’

Before patriliny became evident in Neolithic central Europe, earlier Neolithic cultures of southeast Europe and southwest Asia—ancestral to those in central Europe—were likely organized around mothers and their kin. Matrifocal societies were well suited to communal living, shared labour and collective child-rearing. Cross-culturally, it is observed that household complexes with communal features should facilitate collective child-rearing among female kin, creating multi-family compounds (Mace Reference Mace2013; Sear & Mace Reference Sear and Mace2008).

The early farming village of Çatalhöyük in Anatolia (Fig. 1, site #24), a dense settlement of mudbrick houses, exemplified such an arrangement from 7500 bce. The tightly packed mudbrick houses with roof-entrances at Çatalhöyük suggest a layout that enabled women to maintain fluid access to their female kin, potentially fostering matrilocal practices (Larsen et al. Reference Larsen, Hillson and Boz2015; Pilloud & Larsen Reference Pilloud and Larsen2011).

Other aspects of Çatalhöyük further suggest that its kinship system was not patrilineal. For instance, the plastered skull of a male was found placed within the earlier burial of an elderly female, possibly reflecting reverence for maternal figures (Haddow & Knüsel Reference Haddow and Knüsel2017). Burials under house floors showed little spatial patterning (Carleton et al. Reference Carleton, Connolly and Collard2013), and isotopic analyses revealed no significant dietary differences between sexes (Larsen et al. Reference Larsen, Hillson and Boz2015). Genetic evidence complicates the narrative: children buried within or around the same houses were often not closely related, indicating flexible and diverse kinship practices (Yaka et al. Reference Yaka, Mapelli and Kaptan2021a,b). This fluidity of kinship contrasts sharply with the patrilineal structures that later emerged in Europe.

This evidence is consistent, however, with possible matrilineal kinship. If matrilocality was indeed practised at Çatalhöyük, biodistances among females would likely cluster at the population level rather than within individual households (Alt et al. Reference Alt, Benz and Müller2013). Recent genomic analysis of 133 palaeogenomes from Çatalhöyük indicates an absence of patrilocal residence patterns and supports the hypothesis of matrilineal kinship inherited from earlier foraging populations (Yüncü et al. Reference Yüncü, Doğu and Kaptan2025). In the site’s early phases, burials often included close genetic kin, while Middle and Late period burials featured more genetically unrelated individuals. Female subadults received more elaborate burial treatments than males; in fact, female burials contained objects at five times the frequency of male burials. Mitochondrial DNA homogeneity was significantly higher within buildings than Y-chromosome homogeneity, reinforcing the presence of matrilineal organization (Yüncü et al. Reference Yüncü, Doğu and Kaptan2025). Simulations of residence patterns point to a mix of matrilocal and other non-patrilocal systems, consistent with Çatalhöyük’s egalitarian and matrilineal social structure. Together, these findings suggest that Neolithic households at Çatalhöyük were organized around matrilineal kin groups (Arbuckle Reference Arbuckle2025).

The abandonment of Çatalhöyük by 6000 bce marked a shift in settlement patterns and social organization. Populations dispersed into smaller communities and nomadic livestock herding became more widespread. Over the generations, this may have put pressure on kinship systems to shift away from matriliny. Cross-cultural research shows that animal husbandry—representing mobile, male-controlled wealth—tends to favour patriliny, while matrilineal systems are more commonly associated with horticulture and less compatible with large domestic herds (Moravec et al. Reference Moravec, Atkinson, Bowern, Greenhill and Jordan2018; Sear & Mace Reference Sear and Mace2008; Surowiec et al. Reference Surowiec, Snyder and Creanza2019). In many societies, sons can use livestock as bridewealth, while livestock inherited by daughters often transfers to their husbands, facilitating polygyny and further concentrating wealth along male lines (Holden et al. Reference Holden, Sear and Mace2003). Although population history complicates cross-cultural comparisons, phylogenetic analyses help control for shared ancestry and still support the conclusion that livestock economies are negatively associated with matriliny (Surowiec et al. Reference Surowiec, Snyder and Creanza2019).

Neolithic patriliny in Europe

In Neolithic Europe, most communities practised mixed subsistence economies that included cereal cultivation and varying degrees of animal husbandry, setting the stage for a gradual shift toward patriliny. Broader reviews confirm that such transitions were especially common in contexts involving intensive agriculture, market integration and colonialism, all of which tend to align inheritance with male-dominated lines of descent (Price & Makarewicz Reference Price and Makarewicz2024; Shenk et al. Reference Shenk, Begley, Nolin and Swiatek2019; Smith et al. Reference Smith, Borgerhoff Mulder, Bowles, Gurven, Hertz and Shenk2010). While cultural diffusion may have contributed to these patterns, the association between livestock wealth and patriliny remains robust across controlled comparisons.

As agricultural groups spread from Anatolia into central Europe, significant changes in kinship systems appear to have occurred. By 5000 bce, stock-herding farmers in central and northwestern Europe established widely spaced villages, with large free-standing wooden houses surrounded by outdoor spaces for raising livestock and cultivating gardens and fields. In theory, the combination of inherited livestock wealth and land rights would be conducive to patrilineal kinship systems. Consistent with this, strontium isotope analysis of Linearbandkeramik (LBK) and other early Neolithic cemeteries in central Europe has consistently revealed a tendency for non-local isotopic signatures in female skeletons, in contrast with local signatures among male skeletons (e.g. Bentley Reference Bentley2013; Bentley et al. Reference Bentley, Price, Lüning, Gronenborn, Wahl and Fullagar2002; Reference Bentley, Bickle and Fibiger2012; Bickle et al. Reference Bickle, Bentley and Dočkalová2014).

Female exogamy is frequently coupled with patrilocal residence, which can reinforce male-based descent systems. When women relocate at marriage and children are raised within the husband’s lineage, inheritance and descent become linked along the male line, facilitating the emergence of patrilineal structures. As this interpretation has been critiqued as overly deterministic (e.g. Bickle & Hofmann 2022; Ensor Reference Ensor2021), we retain the association cautiously, focusing on cases where genetic, isotopic, and archaeological evidence converge to suggest enduring patterns of patrilocality and male-line inheritance.

That these were patrilineal, and not just patrilocal, kinship systems is indicated by LBK burials with a distinctive ground-stone adze, which were predominantly found with males yielding a local isotopic signature (Bentley et al. Reference Bentley, Bickle and Fibiger2012). This suggests that LBK males with adzes represented those with privileged access to fertile loess soils (Bentley Reference Bentley2022). Perhaps local men, often buried with distinctive stone adzes, represented lineages tied to houses and agricultural land (Bentley Reference Bentley2013; Reference Bentley2022).

Recently, site-specific genetic studies have provided striking evidence of multi-generational patrilineal pedigrees (Fig. 1). At Gurgy ‘les Noisats’, France (Fig. 1, site #5), c. 4700 bce, for example, genetic analysis revealed seven generations of males descended from a single male ancestor (Rivollat et al. Reference Rivollat, Rohrlach and Ringbauer2023). At Hazleton North in England (Fig. 1, site #3), c. 3650 bce, 15 males and female children, buried over five generations, shared patrilineal descent from a single male, while no genetic links existed among the adult women (Fowler et al. Reference Fowler, Olalde and Cummings2022). At Hazleton, a single male progenitor had children with four women, whose maternal lines remained spatially distinct across generations in the tomb—suggesting the presence of socially meaningful maternal sub-lineages. Although overall descent was patrilineal, the enduring recognition of these maternal branches highlights the social significance of founding women and illustrates differing ways of negotiating kinship in this Neolithic community (Fowler et al. Reference Fowler, Olalde and Cummings2022). Similar patterns are evident in the variation in tomb development and chamber arrangements across Early Neolithic Britain and Ireland (Fowler Reference Fowler2022), where genetic patterning in burial contexts may reflect a reconfiguration of descent and community membership after 3600 bce (Carlin et al. Reference Carlin, Smyth and Frieman2025). Palaeogenomic analysis from five megalithic burial sites of Atlantic Europe reveals Y-chromosome continuity and male-biased burial of close kin, suggesting patriliny (Sánchez-Quinto et al. Reference Sánchez-Quinto, Malmström and Fraser2019).

Nevertheless, there was ‘kinship trouble’, in that surely these kinship systems were variable. Fowler (Reference Fowler2022) interprets the genetic and isotopic analyses in Neolithic Britain and Ireland as indicative of a diverse range of kinship practices, with some tombs indicating close biological relationships and others housing individuals with broader social units than strict family groupings. Isotope analyses at sites in Wales, for example, suggest long-distance mobility and shared lifestyles among groups that used these tombs (Neil et al. Reference Neil, Montgomery, Evans, Cook and Scarre2017; Reference Neil, Evans, Montgomery and Scarre2020).

On the continent, an increase in inherited wealth and status, which began with agrarian fields and livestock, inevitably led to competition between villages and patrilineal clans. The emergence of patriliny in central Europe contrasts, tellingly, with southern Scandinavia, where more diverse kinship practices are exhibited (Frei et al. Reference Frei, Bergerbrant and Sjögren2019). Both local and non-local strontium isotope signatures from an elite Bronze Age woman’s molars at Ginderup Mound, Denmark, suggest a pattern of mobility that cannot be explained by simple marriage-related migration (Reiter et al. Reference Reiter, Møller, Jørkov, Bech, Frei and Frei2023). Similar evidence for multi-locational residence appears in the isotopic profiles of elite women buried at Egtved and Ølby, consistent with more flexible bi- or cognatic descent systems (Bergerbrant Reference Bergerbrant, Berge and Henriksen2019; Melheim Reference Melheim, Pedersen, Moen and Skogstrand2025; Reiter & Frei Reference Reiter and Frei2021). In southwestern Norway, analysis of 32 longhouses dating from the Early Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age suggests co-residence of matrilineal and patrilineal groups, along with designated spaces for non-related dependents—potentially reflecting shared child-rearing practices or fosterage systems (Eriksen & Austvoll Reference Eriksen, Austvoll, Austvoll, Eriksen, Fredriksen, Melheim, Prøsch-Danielsen and Skogstrand2020). Together, these findings point to a diversity of kinship strategies in southern Scandinavia, ranging from elite female mobility and bilateral descent to multi-generational, composite households.

In contrast, the patrilineal kinship of Neolithic central Europe was likely correlated with wealth inheritance, animal husbandry, stand-alone houses in small, clustered settlement, lineage rights to land for cultivation and livestock herding (Ember Reference Ember2011; Perry & Daly Reference Perry and Daly2017; Sear & Mace Reference Sear and Mace2008). Towards 5000 bce, escalating violence can be seen in Neolithic massacre sites, where remains show evidence of raiding rival villages for women and cattle. In Germany, the Neolithic mass grave at Talheim (Fig. 1, site #11), c. 5000 bce, contains the remains of a village that was attacked and the women captured—the few adult females in the burial pit had non-local isotopes, whereas the men and children had local isotopes (Bentley et al. Reference Bentley, Price and Wahl2008). From around the same time, the mass grave at Schöneck-Kilianstädten contained the comingled remains of two dozen people killed by axe blows or shot with arrows. Fractures in many of their tibias indicate their legs were intentionally broken before they died (Meyer et al. Reference Meyer, Lohr, Gronenborn and Alt2015). These brutal attacks likely triggered retaliations and intergenerational feuds. In over 2000 skeletons from Neolithic Europe, about 10 per cent show violent injuries, primarily affecting men, including lethal stone-weapon blows to the head (Fibiger et al. Reference Fibiger, Ahlström, Meyer and Smith2023).

Kinship in Bronze Age Europe

The transition to the Copper and Bronze Ages in Europe coincided with the spread of a type of genetic ancestry that first emerged among pastoralists in the Pontic-Caspian steppe into Eastern and Central Europe in the early third millennium bce, associated with newly emerging cultural complexes such as the Corded Ware and Bell Beaker cultural complexes (Allentoft et al. Reference Allentoft, Sikora and Sjögren2015; Haak et al. Reference Haak, Lazaridis and Patterson2015; Olalde et al. Reference Olalde, Brace and Allentoft2018). The movements of people who brought this ancestry are also linked to the dispersal of most of the Indo-European languages and might have also introduced certain kinship and political systems (Lazaridis et al. Reference Lazaridis, Alpaslan-Roodenberg and Acar2022; Reference Lazaridis, Patterson and Anthony2024). For instance, it has been shown that post-Neolithic developments in Europe coincided with inherited social inequality (Kohler et al. Reference Kohler, Smith and Bogaard2017). Cultural-linguistic phylogenetic studies suggest that proto-Indo-European societies were predominantly patrilocal or virilocal (Fortunato Reference Fortunato2011; Moravec et al. Reference Moravec, Atkinson, Bowern, Greenhill and Jordan2018).

We see early evidence of patrilineal organization in eastern European Eneolithic contexts that may be closely related to the groups from which the Yamnaya phenomenon of the Pontic-Caspian Steppe emerged, the cultural entity proposed as the most likely source of the Late Neolithic dispersals into central Europe (Anthony et al. Reference Anthony, Khokhlov and Agapov2022; Lazaridis et al. Reference Lazaridis, Patterson and Anthony2024). These pastoralist groups were highly mobile with wide-ranging marriage networks. At Khvalynsk II cemetery (Fig. 1, site #25), dated about 4500–4300 bce, where a high proportion of burials are male, prominent grave goods were copper, animal sacrifice and polished stone mace heads. Ancient DNA revealed that males buried with copper were related through a multi-generational patriline and buried together with unrelated women and subadults (Anthony et al. Reference Anthony, Khokhlov and Agapov2022). As an exception, one of the identified pedigrees included two matrilineally related men (Anthony et al. Reference Anthony, Khokhlov and Agapov2022). Like the ground-stone adzes in burials of Neolithic males possibly marking lineages, perhaps the maces signified high-status leaders of an alliance of different ethnic groups who had converged in this population. In any case, the Khvalynsk II case study supports the notion that the ground-stone tools were representative of kinship lineages and resource access.

The patterns of patrilineality and exogamy observed in eastern European Eneolithic contexts appear to have persisted and spread with the expansion of steppe-related ancestry into central Europe. Sjögren et al. (Reference Sjögren, Olalde and Carver2020) provide further evidence for continuity in Bell Beaker communities of southern Germany during the Copper Age (2300–2150 bce). Their analysis revealed strong indications of patrilocality and female exogamy, with multiple generations of related males buried together, suggesting patrilineal descent.

The Lech Valley case study: kinship, mobility and inequality

Grave goods often indicate social inequality in past societies, as exemplified in southern Germany’s Lech Valley (Mittnik et al. Reference Mittnik, Massy and Knipper2019; Reference Mittnik, Massy, Knipper, Meller, Krause, Haak and Risch2023). As the European Neolithic transitioned into the Bronze Age, increasing social inequality was closely tied to the development of patriliny, facilitating intergenerational wealth transmission. Multi-disciplinary evidence from human remains of the Lech Valley (Fig. 1, #13) included ancient DNA, strontium isotopes, radiocarbon dating, and archaeological materials (Knipper et al. Reference Knipper, Mittnik and Massy2017; Mittnik et al. Reference Mittnik, Massy and Knipper2019; Reference Mittnik, Massy, Knipper, Meller, Krause, Haak and Risch2023). Covering a 10×30 km area, this microregion contained densely settled farmsteads and cemeteries spanning the Final Neolithic to Middle Bronze Age (c. 2500–1500 bce). The cemeteries, often located east of farmsteads, held several dozen graves, representing multi-generational ‘households’.

The burial practices in the Lech Valley reflect increasing social stratification, with grave furnishings ranging from richly adorned to bare, indicating varying wealth and status. Unlike the contemporary Únětice culture with its elite ‘princely graves’, the Lech Valley lacked such conspicuous markers, instead emphasizing a moderate stratification tied to trans-regional trade and the adoption of metallurgical technology. Gender played a significant role in burial practices, with distinct burial orientations and differentiated grave goods by sex. These patterns suggest a society negotiating social hierarchies through kinship, trade networks and technological adoption.

Genetic analyses by Mittnik et al. (Reference Mittnik, Massy and Knipper2019; Reference Mittnik, Massy, Knipper, Meller, Krause, Haak and Risch2023) revealed a highly admixed population which homogenized over time, incorporating steppe pastoralist-related ancestry and that of earlier local farming populations. These shifts likely reflect high individual mobility and shared cultural practices. Multi-generational pedigrees reconstructed at two sites showed exclusively patrilineal lineages, with no adult daughters among the excavated offspring. Adult sons remained in their parental communities, while daughters left, consistent with female exogamy. Adult women buried at these sites were unrelated to others except their offspring, underscoring a patrilocal residence system. Close biological relationships were mostly confined to individual cemeteries, with only one case extending between sites.

Markers of wealth and status, such as burial mounds and post alignments, were concentrated among members of the ‘core pedigree’. These high-status individuals, including subadults, were often buried with multiple grave goods, suggesting inherited rather than achieved status. In contrast, a second group of individuals, isotopically local and biologically unrelated to the core pedigree and, with one exception, to each other, had poorly furnished graves, possibly reflecting transient residence and lower-status roles within complex households. Their precise contributions to the community—whether as menial workers or participants in other social systems—remain uncertain.

A third group comprised high-status, non-local women, identified through ornate grave goods and isotopic signatures indicating distant origins, sometimes over 350 km away. These women underwent residential changes during adolescence or later, as evidenced by varying strontium values in their teeth. Despite their high status, they left no genetic relatives within the communities where they were buried. Their roles may have involved cultural transmission, leveraging their acquired knowledge and status, but their precise contributions to these societies require further research.

Overall, the study in the Lech Valley highlighted the interplay of mobility, kinship and social inequality. Among 104 individuals analysed, parent–offspring pairs were predominantly male, consistent with patrilocal residence patterns (Mittnik et al. Reference Mittnik, Massy and Knipper2019). High-status men, often buried with bronze daggers, had close relatives within their cemeteries, while high-status women displayed non-local isotope signatures, contrasting with poorer local burials (Mittnik et al. Reference Mittnik, Massy and Knipper2019). These findings reflect the centrality of patrilineal inheritance and the integration of non-local women as significant agents of social and cultural dynamics in the transition to the Bronze Age (Mittnik et al. Reference Mittnik, Massy, Knipper, Meller, Krause, Haak and Risch2023).

Similarly, across various Bronze Age sites in Europe, mobile women retained high status within dominant and hereditary classes, as evidenced by burial practices. In Iberia’s El Argar society (2200–1500 bce), elite male warriors were often interred in graves where women had been previously buried, emphasizing their association with female prestige. At La Almoloya (Fig. 1, #7), one of many hilltop settlements of El Argar, ancient DNA revealed first-degree relationships exclusively among adult males, with no close genetic ties between the women (Villalba-Mouco et al. Reference Villalba-Mouco, Oliart and Rihuete-Herrada2022). One of the most lavish burials of the European Early Bronze Age at La Almoloya featured a woman in her late twenties, interred with an unrelated man under a large housing complex. The woman was adorned with a silver diadem—a symbol of royal status—and other finely crafted silver items, including bracelets and earlobe tunnel plugs, amounting to half a pound of silver. This wealth, valued at the equivalent of a thousand days’ wages or several tons of barley, contrasted starkly with the man’s burial, which included less expensive copper items.

Further east, Iron Age women also held significant positions of power and influence. In Macedonia around 700 bce, a Paeonian priestess was buried with a bronze wand, bracelets and beads, reflecting her religious and social prominence (Gyucha & Parkinson Reference Gyucha and Parkinson2023). In Illyria, a tribal society in the Balkan Peninsula’s iron-rich regions, a 12-year-old girl was interred with remarkable wealth: dozens of bronze bracelets, a heavy neck torque, large bronze hoops and a bronze sun disc placed on her abdomen (Gyucha & Parkinson Reference Gyucha and Parkinson2023). These burials highlight the enduring roles of women as symbols of wealth, status and cultural significance, even as broader societal structures shifted towards male-dominated systems in Europe.

In Late Iron Age southern Britain, genomic analysis of 57 individuals from Durotrigian burials reveals a matrilocal kinship structure centred on a dominant maternal lineage (Cassidy et al. Reference Cassidy, Russell and Smith2025). In contrast to continental European patriliny, Cassidy et al. (Reference Cassidy, Russell and Smith2025, 1138) propose ‘the possibility of a patrilocal society transitioning to matrilocality’. Further evidence for flexible gender and descent roles comes from Viking Age Scandinavia, where ancient DNA and burial data suggest that some elite women held military and leadership roles (Hedenstierna-Jonson et al. Reference Hedenstierna-Jonson, Kjellström and Zachrisson2017; Jarman Reference Jarman2021; Price et al. Reference Price, Hedenstierna-Jonson and Zachrisson2019). Together, these spatial and temporal patterns suggest that patriliny was not a universal norm, but rather a tradition most strongly rooted in the Neolithic societies of central and northwestern Europe.

In southeastern Europe and the Aegean, evidence since the Neolithic points to flexible kinship systems, illustrating that the adoption of patrilineal organization was not uniform across Europe. At the Mokrin site in Serbia (Fig. 1, #22), dated to 2100–1800 bce, female exogamy appears to have been practised, yet there is little indication of patrilineality; instead, status may have been conferred through maternal lines (Žegarac et al. Reference Žegarac, Winkelbach and Blöcher2021).

This flexibility is also reflected in variations in settlement organization (Furholt Reference Furholt2016), the presence of shared open spaces (Souvatzi Reference Souvatzi2017) and the region’s complex demographic history. Two major gene flow events shaped Aegean populations (Skourtanioti et al. Reference Skourtanioti, Ringbauer and Gnecchi Ruscone2023). The first, in the late fourth millennium bce, introduced Anatolian farmer- and Caucasus-related ancestry alongside the emergence of metallurgy, complex architecture and expanding Mediterranean trade networks. The second, in the late third millennium bce, brought Steppe pastoralist-related ancestry, likely tied to climatic disruption and migration (Clemente et al. Reference Clemente, Unterländer and Dolgova2021; Lazaridis et al. Reference Lazaridis, Mittnik and Patterson2017; Reference Lazaridis, Alpaslan-Roodenberg and Acar2022; Skourtanioti et al. Reference Skourtanioti, Ringbauer and Gnecchi Ruscone2023). This ancestry became widespread in the Late Bronze Age, coinciding with the rise of Mycenaean elites, whose shaft graves reflect increasing regional power and possible military expansion, including into Crete by the fifteenth century bce.

Isotopic studies of mobility in the Aegean remain limited (Nafplioti Reference Nafplioti2008; Prevedorou & Stojanowski Reference Prevedorou and Stojanowski2017; Triantaphyllou et al. Reference Triantaphyllou, Nikita and Kador2015), though the presence of non-local women in Grave Circle A at Mycenae supports elite female exogamy (Nafplioti Reference Nafplioti2009; Reference Nafplioti2011). Genetic analyses now offer deeper insight into social structure and burial practices. At Mygdalia (Fig. 1, #23), a Late Bronze Age collective grave for at least eight perinatal infants revealed that six were children or grandchildren of one couple, and a seventh was likely a maternal cousin (Skourtanioti et al. Reference Skourtanioti, Ringbauer and Gnecchi Ruscone2023). This suggests household-based burial and biological relatedness as key organizing principles—alongside flexible residence strategies such as sibling dispersal, rather than rigid patrilocal or matrilocal norms.

Genomic data also indicate a high frequency of first- and second-cousin unions, consistent with deliberate, endogamous marriage rather than population bottlenecks. Though unevenly sampled, cousin marriage appears widespread across the region. Lévi-Strauss (Reference Lévi-Strauss1949) famously proposed cross-cousin unions as a mechanism for forging bonds between lineages, though this idea remains debated. In the Aegean, reliance on olive cultivation—which promotes sedentism and long-term landholding—may have encouraged such practices to preserve property within extended families.

These findings, though preliminary, highlight the interplay between genetic relatedness, social organization and mortuary practice. In the Bronze Age Aegean, kinship systems appear to have been shaped by localized traditions that maintained both social and biological cohesion.