Exploring families and kinship structures in the past with ancient DNA / Andaine Seguin Orlando Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse, University Paul Sabatier Toulouse 3, Toulouse, France

DNA molecules still preserved in osteological vestiges provide a genetic window into our past. Over the past decade, there has been a growing interest in using molecular data to explore social structures in past societies. In particular, as families and kinship structures may act as the primary social organization, molecular archaeologists have aimed at measur-ing genetic relatedness among individuals from the same site and reconstruct genealogies. Nevertheless, focusing on such pedigrees may hinder the diversity of family schemes, includ-ing unrelated members of the community, and enhance the imposition on prehistoric con-texts of modern, Occidental clichés. We will present how palaeogenomics, when combined with different viewpoints from archaeologists, biogeochemists and socio-cultural anthropol-ogists, can help approaching the complex and diverse patterns of prehistoric kinship. This work is part of an ERC StG project, anthropYXX, aiming at exploiting the full potential of an-cient DNA to explore gender inequalities in pre- and proto-historic societes.