Fostering Women and Mobile Children in Final Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Central Europe

Stockhammer, Philipp W. (2023): Fostering Women and Mobile Children in Final Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Central Europe. In: Kristiansen, Kristian; Kroonen, Guus und Willerslev, Eske (eds.) : The Indo-European Puzzle Revisited : Integrating Archaeology, Genetics, and Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 303-307

Abstract

Over the last several years, it has become clear that Central and Western Europe witnessed an enormous transformation during the third millennium – not only in cultural terms, as has long been clear from the appearance of the Corded Ware Complex (CWC) and the Bell Beaker Complex (BBC), but also from a genetic point of view: archaeogenetic analyses from Central Europe to the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula have revealed genetic signatures with an origin in the western Eurasian steppe regions (Haak et al. 2015; Allentoft et al. 2015; Olalde et al. 2018; Olalde et al. 2019; Fernandes et al. 2020). Whereas early publications on this topic employed dubious vocabulary, like “Yamnaya migration,” there is no doubt that the spread of genes from east to west in prehistoric times could only take place through mobile individuals. Archaeogenetic studies have also suggested a sex bias in these mobile people and that the migration process was predominantly related to male mobility (Goldberg et al. 2017). Since the publication of the scientific results for the Iberian Peninsula (Olalde et al. 2019), newspapers have even interpreted this as evidence of male hoards invading Spain and committing genocide of the local male population. There is no doubt that such simplified narratives do justice neither to archaeological theory nor to the aim of narrating a complex past in a comprehensible manner.

• Item Type: Book Section
• Faculties: Cultural Studies > Department of Ancient and Modern Cultures > Prehistoric and Early Medieval Archeology and Archeology of the Roman Provinces
• Subjects: 900 History and geography > 930 History of ancient world (to ca. 499)
• ISBN: 978-1-009-26174-6 ; 978-1-009-26175-3 ; 978-1-009-26172-2
• Place of Publication: Cambridge
• Language: English