Mobility and kinship in the world's first village societies

Abstract

Strontium and oxygen isotopes were measured for adults who lived in southwest Asia during the foraging-to-farming transition. Data spanning seven millennia show limited mobility during the early Holocene and local partner exchange within small hunter-gatherer communities in the late Pleistocene. Conversely, later megasites show more mixed patterns of mobility and kinship, with greater genetic diversity and more nonlocals immigrating to these sites. We argue that these data show that the key agents in local kinship practices prior to the emergence of farming were derived more from shared ideologies and associations involving fictive kin (e.g., neither consanguineous [blood] nor affinial [marriage-like] ties). Continuity and diversity in kinship practices suggest that the world’s first villages included unique social and biological kinship identities. Keywords: stable isotopes, kinship, early villages