Tooth Chemistry Suggests Most Shackled Men in a Mass Grave Near Athens, Greece, Were Locals, Not Foreigners After All

Near Athens, Greece, archaeologists found a cemetery where most men lay in metal shackles. Many people assumed they were foreigners, such as captives or invaders. A new study of their teeth points the other way. Researchers at Arizona State University report that most of the people they tested grew up in Attica, the region around Athens.

The burial ground at Phaleron

The Phaleron burial ground lies just south of Athens, and the ASU report calls it one of the largest ancient cemeteries found in Greece. Phaleron served as Athens’ port before the Persian Wars, a time when connections across the Greek world were growing.

In 2016, excavators found three mass graves there, which the team calls the Esplanada. They hold 79 adult males in three rows, and most of them wear metal shackles. Why these men were buried this way is still unknown.

How teeth reveal where someone grew up

The team measured radiogenic strontium in tooth enamel. Enamel does not remodel during life, so it records where a person lived in early childhood. Researchers compare the strontium signature with the local geology. A mismatch suggests the person moved to the area after childhood.

The researchers analyzed 66 individuals from the Esplanada and 97 from the wider Phaleron burial ground. Their results appear in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, in a paper titled “Investigating the residential history of the Esplanada mass graves at Phaleron, Greece.” Julianne Stamer of ASU’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change led the work, with co-authors Kelly Knudson and Jane Buikstra.

What they found

Most individuals from both groups were local to Attica. According to the ASU report, this challenges earlier debate about foreign origins. It also highlights similarities between the Esplanada men and the wider cemetery, and it suggests the shackled men were likely part of the same community. The data add bioarchaeological support to the idea that migration into Attica may have been limited in the Archaic period.

What the study does not say

The report does not claim to identify who these men were or why they were buried in shackles. It also does not mention any DNA analysis. Stamer says the Phaleron Bioarchaeological Project is using other techniques to investigate the people of Phaleron, and the team plans further work on their identities.

What remains uncertain

A strontium match shows where someone spent childhood, not who they were or how they ended up in the grave. This post relies on the ASU News release, and we did not read the full paper. Our earlier post on this topic, Shackled Men in an Athens Mass Grave Were Locals, Not Invaders, covers the same finding.

Sources: ASU News (3 September 2026), reporting a study in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. Image credit: iStock/Getty Images (illustrative stock photo of columns in an ancient Greek tomb, not the Phaleron site).