Scientists use ancient DNA, historical context to unravel kinship, social practices of Avar society

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology integrated ancient DNA data with a comprehensive archaeological, anthropological, and historical framework.

It helped reconstruct intricate social dynamics that characterized the steppe-descent populations of the Avar period, who established settlements within Europe’s Carpathian Basin during the 6th century.

The study involved a comprehensive analysis of entire communities by examining all available human remains from four fully excavated cemeteries dating back to the Avar era.

The researchers analyzed analyzed a total of 424 individuals and made the remarkable discovery that approximately 300 of them had a close relative interred within the same cemetery.

This finding sheds light on the intricate structures related to family and society that existed during that historical period.

The analysis allowed the reconstruction of multiple extensive pedigrees. It revealed the practice of a strict patrilineal system of descent within these communities. Women assumed an important role because they established marital ties beyond their original communities.

The Avar people, originating from Eastern Central Asia, established a formidable dominion that spanned a significant portion of Eastern Central Europe for a remarkable period of approximately two and a half centuries, from the 6th to the 9th century CE.

Their predecessors, the Huns, were widely cognized, but Avars have left an archaeological legacy of unparalleled richness in European annals. for example, their cemeteries, numbering around 100,000 graves,undoubtedly, represent both cultural heritage and historical significance.

Archaeological and genetic evidence has shed new light on the social practices and ways of life of the Avar communities that existed over a millennium ago.

Scholars have previously reconstructed aspects of the Avars’ culture from funerary customs and written accounts, and now this material can help analyze the intricate kinship ties among individuals of these communities, tracing their relationships up to the sixth to tenth degree.

Historical knowledge on the Avar period populations was left by their enemies, primarily the Byzantines and the Franks, but information on the internal organization of their clans is limited. the representation of women in these historical sources is particularly scarce, with only three incidental references, resulting in a near absence of knowledge regarding their lived experiences during this era.

It is widely acknowledged that certain groups migrated to Europe from the East Asian and Pontic steppes. However, to what extent, if at all, were steppe traditions maintained in Avar society? How did the newcomer groups from the East interact with each other and with the population of their new homeland in Europe?

The exceptional preservation of ancient DNA (aDNA) enabled a comprehensive analysis of 424 individuals, revealing that approximately 300 had a close familial relationship, either first or second-degree, with others interred within the same cemetery.

This finding allowed the reconstruction of several extensive pedigrees, with the largest spanning an impressive nine generations and encompassing a period of approximately 250 years.

The researchers identified communities that followed a strict patrilineal descent system, characterized by patrilocality and female exogamy.

Patrilocality means the practice where male individuals remain in their community after marriage, while female exogamy involves female individuals moving to their partner’s community upon marriage. This system upholds the tradition of tracing lineage and inheritance through the male line.

Communities were locally centered around a main patriline, were related to each other through the systematic practice of female exogamy.

“In a way, this pattern shows the role of females in promoting the cohesion of this society, it was the role of females that connected the individual communities,” Zuzana Hofmanová, senior author of the study said in a press release.

Multiple reproductive partners were common. Several independent cases show that these communities practiced so-called levirate unions. This practice involves related male individuals (siblings or father and son) having offspring with the same female individual.

“These practices, together with the absence of genetic consanguinity, indicate that the society maintained a detailed memory of its ancestry and knew who its biological relatives were over generations,” Guido Alberto Gnecchi-Ruscone, first author of the study, added.

“This community replacement reflects both an archaeological and dietary shift that we discovered within the site itself, but also a large-scale archaeological transition that occurred throughout the Carpathian Basin,” Zsófia Rácz, co-first author of the study, said.