5,500 years ago, a teenage girl was buried with her father's bones on her chest, new DNA study reveals

a human skeleton with other human bones on top, being excavated from the ground — A young teenage girl was buried with her father's remains clustered on top of her. (Image credit: Göran Burenhult (CC BY))

A rare Stone Age cemetery on a Swedish island reveals that some of Europe's last hunter-gatherers were buried not with their extremely close relations but with more distantly related people, according to a new DNA analysis.

However, some burials had close biological family members, including that of a teenage girl whose father's jumbled bones had been placed on top and next to her, the researchers found.

Ajvide was occupied for at least four centuries, and archaeologists have found tons of pottery and animal bones, in addition to a cemetery. Excavation of the cemetery revealed that eight graves contained more than one person. Researchers originally assumed that the people in the graves were closely related. But advances in ancient DNA analysis raised the possibility of fully investigating familial relationships in the Ajvide cemetery.

"As it is unusual for these kinds of hunter-gatherer graves to be preserved, studies of kinship in archaeological hunter-gatherer cultures are scarce and typically limited in scale," Tiina Mattila, a population geneticist at Uppsala University, said in a statement. Mattila led the genetic analysis of four of the burials, and the study was published Wednesday (Feb. 18) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

two human skeletons being excavated by archaeologists — A girl was buried with a cluster of bones belonging to a young adult female who was distantly related to her. (Image credit: Johan Norderäng (CC BY))

In one grave, excavators had found an adult female skeleton along with the skeletons of two young children. The researchers' DNA analysis revealed that the children were a boy and a girl who were full siblings. The woman, however, was not their mother and may have been their father's sister or their half-sister.

A second grave contained the skeletons of a boy and a girl buried together. DNA analysis showed that they were third-degree relatives – who share one-eighth of their DNA – and likely cousins. In the third grave, DNA analysis of the skeletons of a girl and a young woman revealed they were also third-degree relatives, likely cousins or a great-aunt and great-niece.

a female skeleton in the ground with two small child skeletons near her shoulders — The burial of two children who were full siblings and a woman who was their aunt or half-sister. (Image credit: Göran Burenhult (CC BY))

And in the fourth grave, there was a young teenage girl buried on her back in an outstretched position, with a pile of bones on top and next to her. Using DNA analysis, the researchers discovered that the bones were those of the girl's father. His death probably predates hers, and his bones had likely been dug up and moved to his daughter's grave from elsewhere, the researchers said.

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Kristina Killgrove is a staff writer at Live Science with a focus on archaeology and paleoanthropology news. Her articles have also appeared in venues such as Forbes, Smithsonian, and Mental Floss. Kristina holds a Ph.D. in biological anthropology and an M.A. in classical archaeology from the University of North Carolina, as well as a B.A. in Latin from the University of Virginia, and she was formerly a university professor and researcher. She has received awards from the Society for American Archaeology and the American Anthropological Association for her science writing.

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