Multi-disciplinary Approaches to Prehistoric Kinship Systems of Europe

Abstract

There has been much discussion of various lines of evidence—genetic, bioarchaeological, and cultural–phylogenetic—that indicate patrilineal and patrilocal kinship systems predominated in Neolithic to Bronze Age Europe. These patterns were unique to this time and place, however, and evidence from prior periods and from other regions outside of Europe suggest a broader diversity in kinship systems that was replaced over time. Moreover, practices such as cousin marriage might have emerged in distinct regions, influenced by subsistence strategies and particular lifeways. In considering this diversity, we propose that the patrilineal/patrilocal developments observed in Europe during the Neolithic and Bronze Age were a distinctive prehistoric process among livestock herders and agriculturalists who dispersed into this region. Patrilineal kinship spread with these dispersals, as it now appears that matriliny was practised at Neolithic Çatalhöyük and in Iron Age Britain, for example. In this context, we can argue for different kinship systems in continental Europe before, during and after the Neolithic.