The ancient cemetery of Pommerœul, Belgium, was classified as Gallo-Roman in the 1970s', yielding 76 cremation graves and one inhumation. However, subsequent radiocarbon analyses dated the inhumation to the Late Neolithic (4-3 millennium calBC). We report osteoarchaeological analysis indicating that the inhumation was composed of bones from multiple individuals, afterwards buried as "one". Ancient DNA analyses also finds evidence of multiple individuals and revealed another surprise: the cranium is post-Neolithic and genetically related to a pair of siblings from another Belgian Gallo-Roman site. This composite burial may have been created in Late Neolithic times, with Gallo-Romans adding the cranium, or alternatively the burial may have been fully assembled in the Gallo-Roman periods. This exceptional burial documents unexpected burial practices for both prehistoric and Roman times.

This study reports results from the ancient DNA analysis of a unique child burial at Paquimé, northern Chihuahua, Mexico. Located between Mesoamerican and Ancestral Puebloan groups, Paquimé (also known as Casas Grandes) was a vibrant multicultural centre during the 13th-14th centuries AD. Archaeologists have long debated Paquimé's social organization. Our analysis of Burial 23-8 has revealed that this child, placed under the centre post of an important room, had parents who were close genetic relatives. We argue that this child's consanguinity and special depositional context resulted from an elite family's practice of aggrandizing social status.

Ancient DNA (aDNA) data are reported for two human skeletons buried within the chancel of the 1608-1616 church at the North American colonial settlement of Jamestown, Virginia. The men are suspected kinsmen of the colony's first Governor, Thomas West, 3 Baron De La Warr based on archaeological, osteological, and documentary evidence. Genomic analyses of these men, Sir Ferdinando Wenman and Captain William West, identify a shared mitochondrial haplogroup, H10e, inferring maternal relatedness. In this unusual case, aDNA prompted further historical research that led to the discovery of illegitimacy, an aspect of identity omitted, likely intentionally, from genealogical records.

DNA analysis demonstrates that all seven individuals buried in an Early Iron Age barrow at Dolge njive, southeast Slovenia, are close biological relatives. Although group composition does not suggest strict adherence to a patrilineal or matrilineal kinship system, the funerary tradition appears highly gendered, with family links through both the male and female line being important in structuring communities. We explore the implications for our understandings of kinship and funerary practices in Early Iron Age southeast Europe.

Recent aDNA analysis has demonstrated that the centuries surrounding the arrival of the Beaker Complex in Britain witnessed a massive turnover in the genetic make-up of the population. Here we consider the archaeological implications of this finding, and propose two hypotheses - Beaker Colonisation and Steppe Drift - that might help us understand the underlying social processes, and propose directions for future research.