Project description
Studying prehistoric kinship through ancient DNA
The kinship and social networks of prehistoric societies have long been a mystery, studied only through indirect evidence. The ERC-funded ROAMANCE project is changing this landscape by harnessing recent advances in archaeogenetics. By analysing ancient genomic data from nearly all individuals at archaeological sites, ROAMANCE can now directly estimate biological relatedness and social structures. This approach allows researchers to trace kinship connections up to the 10th degree and uncover distant relatives across sites. Integrating this genetic data with archaeological and anthropological insights, ROAMANCE aims to create detailed maps of prehistoric social networks, revealing how ancient communities interacted and organised themselves over time and space.
Objective
Kinship systems and networks of contact and exchange in prehistoric societies could so far only be studied indirectly. Recent advances in archaeogenetics have enabled the retrieval of ancient genomic data with high success rates, which often allows the study of nearly all individuals from the same archaeological site, making intra-site studies become reality. Estimating degrees of biological relatedness and demonstrating biological unrelatedness can form a robust scaffold to reconstruct social and kin relations, which permit stable inferences on kinship structures and social organisation in prehistoric societies. Further analytical advances that estimate shared identity-by-descent between individuals can identify biological relatives up to the 10th degree, which has enabled the detection of distant relatives between different sites. Many such connections across sites and regions can be found in the published ancient human genomes from Europe’s prehistory, and the chances to find more scales up quadratically with the number of individuals studied. Through full integration of archaeological, anthropological, isotopic and other context data, it will for the first time be possible to match levels of resolution in archaeology and genetics, to map relationships over geographic distances, and to learn how prehistoric communities were organised, interacted and formed networks. Given these exciting prospects, this project will enhance the data density in Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe by including new well-contextualised sites and regions at our disposal with the aim to build comprehensive maps of contact, trade and exchange based on quantifiable and statistically robust measures. This unique, large-scale, spatio-temporal reference dataset will allow us to use innovative integrated modelling approaches that explore theoretical frameworks and kinship models from ethnographic studies, and to produce novel insights into the evolution and structures of human societies.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- humanities history and archaeology history prehistory
- humanities history and archaeology archaeology
- natural sciences computer and information sciences data science data exchange
- natural sciences biological sciences genetics genomes
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2023-ADG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
80539 MUNCHEN
Germany
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.