Palaeogenetic Insights into Kinship and Social Organization at the Early Bronze Age “Princely” Barrow Cemetery of Łęki Małe, Poland

The Early Bronze Age in Central Europe (~ 2200–1600 BC) saw the emergence of hierarchical social organisation, expressed most visibly in large burial mounds constructed for a small number of high-status individuals. While palaeogenomic studies of flat-grave cemeteries have shed light on kinship among non-elite populations, comparable data from elite contexts remain scarce. Here, we present genome-wide data from five individuals interred in burial mounds at Łęki Małe, Poland, to investigate kinship organisation within an elite setting.

We reconstruct a two-generation pedigree centred on a high-status adult female buried alongside loose skeletal elements of her father — deposited as a pars pro toto — and the complete skeletal remains of her male subadult full and half-siblings. This reveals that biological relationships were selectively foregrounded in funerary practice, and that the mode of inclusion varied: the father was represented symbolically, while the siblings were interred as whole individuals. The pedigree also indicates that an unsampled mother had offspring with two different males, suggesting these assemblages do not straightforwardly reflect normative kinship structures.

These findings highlight variability in Early Bronze Age kinship organisation and suggest that elite burial contexts structured social identity around particular individuals and their biographical relationships.