Joanna Brück, PhD

Professor, School of Archaeology

University College Dublin, Ireland

Abstract

Bronze Age Europe is often seen as a period which saw the emergence of chiefly aristocracies who competed to control trade and to accumulate wealth in the form of bronze objects and other prestige goods. Recent archaeogenetic studies have supported this vision of the Bronze Age, in which expansionist warrior societies were organised into patrilineal kin groups and the exchange of women as brides between powerful men was used to cement political allegiances. But are there alternatives to this gendered narrative of the past? Although archaeogenetic analyses have yielded exciting new insights, current interpretations of the evidence are often based on biogenetic formulations of kinship and identity that are the legacy of colonial history. In contrast, anthropological research indicates that ideas of kinship are not always based on biological relatedness and that the links between descent, marriage and gender are complex and variable. Taking Chalcolithic and Bronze Age Britain as an example, and bringing together the genetic and archaeological evidence, this paper will consider alternative ways of interpreting the genetic data and of exploring the social processes by which identities were constructed in prehistory. In this region, although paternal links were evidently significant, other forms of kinship can be discerned, suggesting that the position of women in kin groups varied; that social processes such as ritual and exchange were central to the making of relations; and that non-human others could also be considered as kin. This view from the margins suggests that it may be fruitful to consider alternative ways of interpreting the archaeogenetic evidence from other regions of Europe.