Rare Remains Provide Insights Into Bronze Age Burials, Diet, and Society

Around 3000 years ago, during the late Bronze Age, a new burial tradition emerged. Families began to cremate their deceased relatives, before placing their ashes into urns, which were then buried in fields. This period would come to be known as the Urnfield period by archaeologists. The cultural change in the Urnfield period has not made it easy to study the customs of the time, as buried ash is hard to interrogate for biological clues.

Now, a new study published in Nature Communications by an international group of archaeologists has unearthed insights into the Urnfield period by analyzing rare examples of whole-body burials from Central Europe. The analysis has provided new insight into the ancestry, diet, and lifestyle of people from the era.

“This study allows us to see how people lived through change,” said Eleftheria Orfanou, an archeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and study co-author, in a statement. “The Late Bronze Age was not experienced as a single moment of change, but as a series of choices, about food and subsistence strategies, burial, and social relationships, made within communities that were closely connected to their landscapes but also to their neighbors.”

Read More: Ancient DNA Uncovers Startling Family Secret of a 3,500-Year-Old Bronze Age Community

Analyzing DNA Molecules From Bronze Age Sites

In the new study, Orfanou and her team analyzed ancient DNA molecules, strontium and oxygen isotopes, and information from buried skeletons. In total, the team drew together information from 36 burials across sites in Central Germany. They compared the information from these sites with samples from a set of contemporaneous burials in what is now South Germany, Czechia, and Poland.

The highly stable strontium and oxygen isotopes could tell the team about where their study subjects lived. This information suggested that the people buried in Central Germany had spent their entire lives in the region, rather than having undergone mass migration between regions.

What Was on the Bronze Age Menu

Molecular analysis could also reveal information about the Bronze Age’s dietary patterns. As the Bronze Age drew to a close, people began eating broomcorn millet, a recent arrival from China.

This shift appears to have occurred independently of other demographic shifts, suggesting that communities that had previously grown other crops shifted their diets in response to economic or environmental challenges. The latest samples analyzed in the study suggested that locals switched back to their traditional favorites, barley and wheat, highlighting the flexibility and experimentation of these Bronze Age communities.

Choosing Their Burial

The researchers also assessed biomarkers from the skeletons. This analysis turned up little evidence of epidemic disease. Instead, the Bronze Age people appeared to have had healthy, but physically taxing lives.

The study highlighted that burial practices during the period were highly varied, even within single communities. It appears that people of the time were able to freely choose between cremation, skull-only burial, or full-body burial.

“These practices do not appear to be marginal or atypical,” said Orfanou.

These shards of evidence from a long-forgotten society reveal that, even thousands of years ago, human culture was flexible and dynamic.

“Change and innovation were incorporated into existing traditions. These communities actively shaped their lifeways and created hybrid practices that were locally meaningful within an increasingly interconnected world,” said Wolfgang Haak, an archeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and senior study author, in a statement.

Read More: Bronze Age Bones Indicate Violent Death and Possible Cannibalism

Article Sources

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• This article references information from a study published in Nature Communications: Reconstruction of the lifeways of Central European Late Bronze Age communities using ancient DNA, isotope and osteoarchaeological analyses