Gendered burial practices of early Bronze Age children align with peptide-based sex identification: a case study from Franzhausen I, Austria

ABSTRACT: Gendered burial practices that differentiate between men and women by the way the body was placed were used over large parts of Central Europe in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (c. 2900−1600 BC). The differentiation of bodies placed on the left/right side in opposite orientation was extended to children, but until recently, it was difficult to confirm if the biological sex of the children matched the classification as men and women. We applied nanoflow liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (nanoLC-MS/MS) to identify sex-specific peptides in human tooth enamel in 75 children buried at one of the largest Early Bronze Age cemeteries in Europe, Franzhausen I, Austria, 70 of which produced reliable results. The study confirmed that the sex of the children corresponds to the gendered body position in 98.4 % of cases. For burials in which the gendered sidedness and orientation are not internally consistent with the male or female pattern, we found that the sidedness of the body corresponds to the sex of the children rather than the orientation.

INSTRUMENT(S): Q Exactive

ORGANISM(S): Homo Sapiens (human)

SUBMITTER: Christopher Gerner  

LAB HEAD: Christopher Gerner

PROVIDER: PXD026419 | Pride | 2022-06-24

REPOSITORIES: Pride