Female lineages and changing kinship patterns in Neolithic Çatalhöyük

INTRODUCTION: Çatalhöyük is a Neolithic settlement in Anatolia and a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site. Occupied for 1000 years (9000 to 8000 BCE), it is renowned for its size, apparent egalitarian social structure, and subfloor burials, where children and adults were buried within houses during their use. It is also known for its large corpus of female figurines, which were long debated as possible representatives of a “Mother Goddess” cult and signs of a matriarchal society. RATIONALE: In this work, we studied social organization at Çatalhöyük, fusing rich archaeological data with a paleogenomic dataset of 131 individuals buried in 35 houses. We focused on identifying genetic ties between individuals buried together inside the same buildings. RESULTS: Comparing genetic ties within and between buildings, we found that the maternal lineage had a key role in connecting Çatalhöyük household members, as represented by burials within each building. We estimated that 70 to 100% of the time, female offspring remained connected to buildings, whereas adult male offspring may have moved away. We also discovered preferential treatment of female infant and child burials, with five times more grave goods offered to females than to males. Our data further show how social organization patterns changed over time in Çatalhöyük. In the early phases of the settlement, individuals buried together within houses frequently represented extended family members. Through time, the genetic composition of house burials became less homogeneous. In later periods, we found groups of neonates who were genetically unrelated but buried in the same house. Meanwhile, their mothers appear to have had similar diets. This implies that genetic relatedness became less central to social organization over time, which could be explained by fostering and adoption-like mechanisms becoming widespread, which is also observed today in various societies. Despite this shift, female-centered practices continued at Çatalhöyük through the occupation. CONCLUSION: Our results reveal the malleable nature of social organization in Neolithic villages, with the composition of households possibly changing within a few dozen generations. We also found the first direct indication of female-centered practices in Neolithic Southwest Asia, a question of frequent debate. This female focus identified in Çatalhöyük is in sharp contrast to patterns observed in later European Neolithic sites, which have their origins in Anatolia. Many of these European societies show evidence of patrilocality—where males stay within their natal community upon attaining adulthood and females move out—and elaborate burial treatments that are frequently associated with males. The Çatalhöyük evidence now shows that such male-centered practices were not an inherent characteristic of early agricultural societies.