When archaeologists find adults and children buried together in medieval tombs, it is often assumed that they may have been members of the same family. A new study from Stockholm University published in Science Advances suggests otherwise.
Researchers at Stockholm University analyzed the DNA of 142 people from the late Viking Age to the Middle Ages, including more than 60 children and adolescents buried in graves in Sigtuna near Stockholm, Västerhus in Jämtland, and Fjerkinge in Skåne.
The results showed that even in cemeteries where high levels of kinship were detected, the existence of close biological relatives among people buried in the same grave is surprisingly rare.
We often assume that adults and children who share a grave are parents and children or other close relatives. Most of the time, that wasn’t what we found. ”
Maja Krzewińska, Center for Paleogenetics, Faculty of Archeology and Classics, Stockholm University, lead study author
Rather, the researchers’ findings suggest that factors other than close family relationships often influence who is buried together.
“Archaeologists have long debated the relationships between people buried together in these types of tombs. Ancient DNA finally gives us the tools we’ve been waiting for to directly test these interpretations,” says Anna Kjällström, a researcher at Stockholm University’s Department of Archeology and Classics.
The study also sheds light on the lives of early Christian Scandinavian children. By using ancient DNA, researchers were able to determine the biological sex of the child, who was too young to be identified osteologically. Boys and girls were often buried according to the same cemetery rules as adults. For example, in Westerhus, men and women were usually buried on different sides of the churchyard, and boys and girls followed the same pattern. This suggests that gender identity was recognized early in life.
“Children were not treated as a separate category. After death, they seem to have been treated according to the same social and religious principles as adult men and women,” says Anders Gaitherström, professor of molecular archeology at the Center for Paleogenetics at Stockholm University’s Department of Archeology and Classics.
The study also identified notable families from the medieval cemetery of Westerhus. A woman known to researchers as “Lady 56” may be linked through DNA to several relatives buried in the churchyard, including her parents, brother and two daughters. But her story extends far beyond Jämtland.
Buried with her was a scallop shell, a rare find in medieval Scandinavian graves and a well-known symbol of pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. The discovery suggests that she completed one of medieval Europe’s most famous pilgrimages, traveling thousands of kilometers across the continent to the edge of Christian Europe and then returning home. The 56-year-old woman died before she was 30 years old. Her parents, brother and daughter were also buried in different parts of the same cemetery in Jämtland.
This study demonstrates how archaeogenetics can advance our understanding of medieval societies, revealing not only biological relationships but also the social worlds in which people lived, organized communities, worshiped, and ultimately were buried.
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Reference magazines:
Krzewińska, M., others. (2026) Equality in Death: An Ancient Genomic Analysis of Early Christian Burials of Children. scientific progress. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aeb8588. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aeb8588
