Kinship relationships in Mycenaean Greece from a bioarchaeological perspective

The lecture examines kinship relationships in Mycenaean Greece from a bioarchaeological perspective. Since Heinrich Schliemann's excavations, the reconstruction of social structures in Mycenaean societies has been a central research topic. For a long time, individuals buried together in chamber tombs were interpreted as biological family members – yet biological kinship and social belonging do not necessarily coincide.

Philipp W. Stockhammer combines current archaeogenetic analyses with archaeological findings to unravel this dynamic. Using Mycenaean chamber tombs as an example, it is shown how secondary burials, marriage patterns, and mobility shaped the construction of social communities in Bronze Age Greece. The focus is on the interactions between biological kinship and collective burial practices.