Bronze Age Greece: Young Adults Moved, Not Whole Families
For a long time, archaeologists assumed that in prehistoric societies mostly women moved between communities, usually through marriage. A new study of Bronze Age Greece does not fit that picture.
Researchers from the University of Gothenburg and colleagues analyzed strontium isotopes in 199 skeletal samples from six archaeological sites in central and southern Greece. Their study, published in PLOS One, covers the Middle and Late Bronze Age and was part of the Rise II project at Gothenburg’s Department of Historical Studies.
How the method works
The strontium composition in a person’s bones comes from the water and food they consumed as a child, which usually come from the immediate surroundings. If the strontium in someone’s skeleton differs from the local baseline around the burial site, researchers read that person as having grown up elsewhere.
What they found
A consistent 5 to 10 percent of the individuals in each studied community were foreigners. The team found no non-locals among the children it analyzed. Young adults under 30 were the most likely to be non-local, which suggests that migration involved mostly single young individuals rather than whole families relocating.
The study also found that non-local women and men were about equally common. Serena Sabatini of the University of Gothenburg said this suggests several different factors may have driven a person’s mobility, not just marriage customs. Non-locals turned up in both unremarkable graves and richly furnished ones, so people moved regardless of wealth or status.
What it does not show
Strontium isotopes show where a person spent childhood, not why they moved. The study covers six sites in central and southern Greece, so it does not speak for the whole Mediterranean.
Sources
Related Articles
