The social status of motherhood in Bronze Age Europe

This project explores social responses to pregnancy, birth and early child rearing as well as the link between womens reproductive status and social status in Bronze Age central Europe. Motherhood and early childrearing are often interpreted as a natural, normal and inevitable parts of womens lives, when in fact, they are sets of cultural practices that build the foundations of societies. During the Bronze Age (c. 2200 - 800 BC), important long-term developments took place, such as the beginning of social stratification and increasing population density. This project will investigate if and how the social status of women changed as they became mothers and how reproduction was culturally embedded in different societies. It will aim to understand how the conceptualisation of motherhood changed over time, both at a culturally specific level and as a broader (pre-) historical phenomenon. This project is the first that aims to systematically differentiate between women who became mothers and women who did not, and relate funerary practices and artefacts in the graves to this identity marker. It will explore if all women were expected to become mothers, highlighting that women might have had different pathways in life, and investigate the risk of becoming a mother as well as the social consequences of the transition to motherhood. The study extends to assessing practices of raising infants (feeding and care, but also abuse, neglect and infanticide) and analysing their treatment after death for further insights into the social value of reproduction. Innovative archaeological and bio-anthropological methods will be applied to recently published Bronze Age cemeteries from Austria. The early Bronze Age inhumation cemeteries belong to three cultural groups with different burial practices (netice, Unterwölbing and Wieselburg). Middle and late Bronze Age cemeteries include cremated individuals. Archaeological methods include an assessment of the spatial distribution of graves of infants, pregnant women, double burials of women and children, and women who have/have not given birth, interpreting the symbolic dimension of co-buried objects, and evaluating status differences expressed through funerary treatment as well as in the quality and quantity of grave goods. Bio-anthropological methods include the palaeo-pathological re-assessment of female and infant skeletons, isotope analysis to assess infant feeding practices, and DNA studies to understand the genetic relationship between co-buried individuals and the sex of buried babies. Bringing together the latest developments in archaeological science with innovative archaeological interpretations makes it possible to comment on current social issues. In an era in which political discourses about mothers in society and workforce frequently refer to what is supposedly natural and ancient about childrearing, it is important and high time to take a fresh look at how motherhood has been interpreted over time.

Motherhood and early childrearing are often interpreted as a natural, normal and inevitable parts of womens lives, when in fact, they are sets of cultural practices that form the foundations of societies. This project explored social responses to pregnancy, birth and early child rearing in Bronze Age central Europe and developed a methodological package to investigate motherhood through a combined theoretical and bio-archaeological approach. Methods included an assessment of the spatial distribution of graves of infants, pregnant women, double burials of women and children; the gender and age analysis of material culture; the evaluation of status differences expressed through funerary treatment as well as in the quality and quantity of grave goods; osteological analyses (age at death, sex, body height, pathologies, with an emphasis on pelvic changes), 14C dating, tooth cementum annulation, ?13C/?15N isotope and aDNA analyses as well as demographic modelling. Investigating the link between womens reproductive and social status included work on Early Bronze Age inhumation graves of groups with different burial practices from Lower Austria (netice and Unterwölbing); Middle and Late Bronze Age cemeteries also contained cremated individuals. More research is needed to clarify how representative the case studies are for the whole of European prehistory. In early Bronze Age case studies, we found a young age for first time mothers in their late teens, and no particular differentiation between different kinds of women that could be explained by reproductive success. Age and gender were clearly the most important components of identity expressed in the funerary ritual. The typical age of first motherhood corresponds to high status values, which suggests a link between reproductive age and potential, but not necessarily reproductive success. The lifetime maternal mortality risk can be estimated at around 10-15%, with women giving birth to between 7 and 8 children on average if they reached the age of menopause. We identified a shift in social organisation towards the Iron Age, which includes a higher age for marriage and motherhood as well as more diversity of womens lives, which may be linked to reproduction. We advocate for continued investigations of motherhood as an independent category of identity and were fortunate to secure funding through an ERC Starting Grant [676828] for a diachronic analysis of motherhood in the last three millennia BC. In an era in which political discourses about mothers in society and workforce frequently refer to what is supposedly natural and ancient about childrearing, it is important to take a fresh look at motherhood and separate scientific facts from fiction.