Early Christian communities in Sweden often buried children in the same grave with adults, but archaeologists have found that these individuals rarely shared close biological ties, raising the question of how medieval people interred their dead.
In a new study, researchers analyzed the DNA of 142 skeletons from three cemeteries in Sweden dating to the 10th to 14th centuries, focusing on collective burials in which two or more people were buried in the same tomb.
"We often assume that adults and children sharing a grave were parents and children or other close family members," study first author Maja Krzewińska, a paleogeneticist at Stockholm University, said in a statement. "In most cases, that was not what we found."
English (US)