Young adults, not families, drove migration in Bronze Age communities. Using skeletal samples from various archaeological sites in Greece, researchers have been able to map mobility during the local Middle and Late Bronze Age. Among other things, the study suggests that it was young people who sought out new communities.

The findings challenge traditional assumptions about mobility and migration in prehistoric societies. Previous research has often suggested that women were more likely to move between communities, particularly through marriage in patrilineal societies.

“Our study demonstrates that the number of non-local women to men are comparable, suggesting that several different factors might have been driving an individual’s mobility”, says Serena Sabatini, University of Gothenburg.

The Mediterranean region saw significant socio-cultural and economic transformations during the Bronze Age, varying across regions and over time. Expanding exchange networks played an important role in these developments. To what extent these exchanges were accompanied by the migration and settlement of foreign individuals within local communities is still poorly understood.

The study: Exploring mobility in Bronze Age Greece: A Sr isotope perspective has been published in PLOS One. The paper investigated determined the childhood origins of 199 Bronze Age individuals from southern and central Greece.

The study shows that a consistent rate of 5% to 10% of the individuals analysed in each of the studied Bronze Age communities from modern-day Greece were ‘foreigners’.
“Interestingly, non-local individuals were identified across different burial practices, featuring both unremarkable and richly furbished graves, revealing that individuals were mobile regardless of their wealth or status”, says Serena Sabatini, University of Gothenburg.

While no ‘foreigners’ were identified among the investigated children, young adults under the age of 30 were most likely to be non-local, suggesting that mobility and migration concerned to a considerable extent single young individuals rather than the relocation of entire families.

Serena Sabatini and Kristian Kristiansen, both archaeologists from the University of Gothenburg have participated in the study. The study is published in PLOS One as open access: Exploring mobility in Bronze Age Greece: A Sr isotope perspective https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0357576