Bronze Age · c. 1300–800 BC · Esperstedt, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
Ancient DNA from rare uncremated Bronze Age graves traces Urnfield life in Central Europe
Most people studied in Central Germany grew up locally, and communities seem to have tried millet for a time before going back to wheat and barley.
Peer-reviewed paper
Esperstedt, Germany Rare burials that escaped cremation have given researchers their first detailed biomolecular picture of Urnfield Culture communities. These people lived in Central Europe between roughly 1300 and 800 BC. The team analysed remains from Germany, Czechia and Poland.
Most people studied in Central Germany grew up near where they were buried. Changes in ancestry came slowly. The team argues that the period's new ideas and practices spread through contact between communities, rather than through large-scale migration.
The study is published in Nature Communications. It was led by Eleftheria Orfanou, a doctoral candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. The team combined ancient DNA, stable isotopes and osteoarchaeological data.
The Urnfield Culture takes its name from a burial practice: people burned the dead and buried the ashes in urns. Cremation destroys most of the biological material needed for genetic and isotopic work. As a result, the Late Bronze Age has been largely closed to this kind of research.
The team therefore concentrated on the exceptional graves where bodies were buried unburnt.
Most people were local, with growing contacts further south
The most important fieldwork took place at Kuckenburg and Esperstedt in Central Germany. The State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology of Saxony-Anhalt directed it. At Esperstedt, excavations took place during construction of the BAB 38 motorway.
These excavations found Late Bronze Age circular ditches surrounding central graves. They also found burials with stone-built walls.
The researchers measured strontium and oxygen isotopes in remains from these sites. They tested both cremated and unburnt remains. Most individuals tested in Central Germany had local signatures, whichever way they had been buried.
These isotopes are taken up from local water and food. They therefore record the area where a person grew up and lived. This can show whether a person was local.
The genetic data show gradual changes in ancestry. These changes varied from region to region. In Central Germany the shifts appear only in the later phases of the Late Bronze Age.
The authors read this as a sign of growing connections with regions south and southeast of the Danube. In their reading, local traditions were not replaced.
The Late Bronze Age was not experienced as a single moment of change, but as a series of decisions about food, subsistence strategies, burial, and social relationships, made within communities that were closely connected to their landscapes, but also to their neighbors.
Eleftheria Orfanou, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
People tried millet, then returned to wheat and barley
Evidence from diet points to a phase of experimenting with common millet. This cereal had recently reached Europe from northeastern China. According to the study, people began eating it in the early part of the Late Bronze Age.
The study says they probably did so in response to environmental or economic pressures. The crop's arrival did not coincide with any large demographic or genetic change. This suggests that existing communities took up millet themselves.
Later in the period, millet consumption appears to fall. Diets turn back towards wheat and barley. The team describes this as experimentation and adaptation, rather than a steady move towards millet farming.
Change and innovation were incorporated into existing traditions.
Wolfgang Haak, project leader, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
The researchers also looked for traces of disease. DNA analysis identified bacteria commonly found with dental and other oral health problems. It found no signs of widespread epidemic infection.
The skeletons show stress during childhood, degenerative joint disease and occasional trauma. These point to physically hard lives. Even so, the team judges the overall health of most individuals to have been good. It found no evidence of a major health crisis.
Burial customs turned out to be more varied than expected. Urnfield communities practised cremation and inhumation side by side. They also deposited isolated skulls and carried out rites in several stages.
Orfanou says these practices do not appear to be marginal or unusual. In her view, they formed part of a wider repertoire that people could choose from. She says this repertoire was tied to memory, identity and ideas about what it meant to be a person in the Late Bronze Age.
Sources
- This Is How Europeans of the Urnfield Culture Experienced the Transition of the Late Bronze Age, According to a DNA Study (La Brújula Verde)
Paper: Orfanou, E., Ghalichi, A., Rohrlach, A.B. et al. Reconstruction of the lifeways of Central European Late Bronze Age communities using ancient DNA, isotope and osteoarchaeological analyses. Nature Communications 17, 1992 (2026). doi:10.1038/s41467-026-69895-y
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