Collaborative Research: Reconstructing Classic Genetic and Social Kinship Networks

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

Family and familial relations form the underlying basis of social interaction in all human societies around the world. Anthropological reconstructions of contemporary kinship systems have revealed how insightful the study of families are to understanding broader socio-political relationships. Yet to date, there is very little understanding of past kinship practices. Ancient historical texts to focus on elite social members. While these sources clearly show that royal marriages were vitally important political unions, it is necessary to move below the tip of the iceberg and begin to understand kinship at a societal scale to truly understand political relationships and interaction at a broader level. Recent advances in archaeological genetics offer enormous potential to understand such relationships in the ancient world. This project focuses on reconstructing the entirety of social kinship practices at a broad social scale. The project will provide a nuanced understanding of how a kinship system operated at different levels of social and political hierarchy, and it will open the door to societal-scale reconstructions of kinship practices in the past. This project provides training for a postdoctoral researcher in analytical techniques that bridge the social and natural sciences, as well as collaborative training opportunities for early career researchers. The project has flagship outreach and engagement components that will build international bridges between students and researchers, and directly involve stakeholders and descendant communities. Dissemination of results will be achieved through a multiplicity of scientific and popular publications, as well as interactive activities. The research examines: (1) how marriage alliances were employed by different members of a hierarchical social hierarchy; (2) how marriage patterns varied between polities; and (3) how marriage patterns changed over time, through a society’s rise to its decline and political collapse. These questions will be approached by systematically analyzing extensive archaeological data collected over the past 30 years, in combination with new radiocarbon dating and archaeogenetics analysis. Genome-wide ancient DNA analysis will be used to reconstruct the genetic history of 21 elite and commoner households in order to provide a societal scale understanding of kinship practices and marriage alliances at three different sites during periods of centralization and decline in political power and authority. The framework developed in this study will serve as a model that can be employed in multiple regions of the world to better understand the emergence and perpetuation of systems of power and inequality. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.