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Discussed in the article, the multi-burial grave from Ilyatka (Staraya Sinyava district, Khmelnytskyi province, Ukraine) is the first feature of the Globular Amphora culture in the drainage basin of the upper Southern Bug to be subjected to comprehensive bioarchaeological and chronological analyses. The time when the remains of seven people (four men and three women) were deposited in it was determined to be 2700–2550 BC. The feature is part of a small site cluster on the upper Southern Bug, made up of 16 sites. The importance of the cluster follows from its location in one of the crucial communication hubs of the Ukrainian forest-steppe. This makes the cluster vital for the exploration of the forest-steppe settlement by Globular Amphora communities, their expansion towards the middle Dnieper area, and connections to Yamnaya culture groups.

The genomic landscape of Stone Age Europe was shaped by multiple migratory waves and population replacements, but different regions do not all show the same patterns. To refine our understanding of the population dynamics before and after the dawn of the Neolithic, we generated and analyzed genomic sequence data from human remains of 56 individuals from the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Eneolithic across Central and Eastern Europe. We found that Mesolithic European populations formed a geographically widespread isolation-by-distance zone ranging from Central Europe to Siberia, which was already established 10 000 years ago. We also found contrasting patterns of population continuity during the Neolithic transition: people around the lower Dnipro Valley region, Ukraine, showed continuity over 4 000 years, from the Mesolithic to the end of Neolithic, in contrast to almost all other parts of Europe where population turnover drove this cultural change, including vast areas of Central Europe and around the Danube River.

Due to postmortem DNA degradation, most ancient genomes sequenced to date have low depth of coverage, preventing the true underlying genotypes from being recovered. Genotype imputation has been put forward to improve genotyping accuracy for low-coverage genomes. However, it is unknown to what extent imputation of ancient genomes produces accurate genotypes and whether imputation introduces bias to downstream analyses. To address these questions, we downsampled 43 ancient genomes, 42 of which are high-coverage (above 10x) and three constitute a trio (mother, father and son), from different times and continents to simulate data with coverage in the range of 0.1x-2.0x and imputed these using state-of-the-art methods and reference panels. We assessed imputation accuracy across ancestries and depths of coverage. We found that ancient and modern DNA imputation accuracies were comparable. We imputed most of the 42 high-coverage genomes downsampled to 1x with low error rates (below 5%) and estimated higher error rates for African genomes, which are underrepresented in the reference panel. We used the ancient trio data to validate imputation and phasing results using an orthogonal approach based on Mendel’s rules of inheritance. This resulted in imputation and switch error rates of 1.9% and 2.0%, respectively, for 1x genomes. We further compared the results of downstream analyses between imputed and high-coverage genomes, notably principal component analysis (PCA), genetic clustering, and runs of homozygosity (ROH). For these three approaches, we observed similar results between imputed and high-coverage genomes using depths of coverage of at least 0.5x, except for African genomes, for which the decreased imputation accuracy impacted ROH estimates. Altogether, these results suggest that, for most populations and depths of coverage as low as 0.5x, imputation is a reliable method with potential to expand and improve ancient DNA studies.

Significance We sequenced the genomes of 15 skeletons from a 5,000-y-old mass grave in Poland associated with the Globular Amphora culture. All individuals had been brutally killed by blows to the head, but buried with great care. Genome-wide analyses demonstrate that this was a large extended family and that the people who buried them knew them well: mothers are buried with their children, and siblings next to each other. From a population genetic viewpoint, the individuals are clearly distinct from neighboring Corded Ware groups because of their lack of steppe-related ancestry. Although the reason for the massacre is unknown, it is possible that it was connected with the expansion of Corded Ware groups, which may have resulted in violent conflict., The third millennium BCE was a period of major cultural and demographic changes in Europe that signaled the beginning of the Bronze Age. People from the Pontic steppe expanded westward, leading to the formation of the Corded Ware complex and transforming the genetic landscape of Europe. At the time, the Globular Amphora culture (3300–2700 BCE) existed over large parts of Central and Eastern Europe, but little is known about their interaction with neighboring Corded Ware groups and steppe societies. Here we present a detailed study of a Late Neolithic mass grave from southern Poland belonging to the Globular Amphora culture and containing the remains of 15 men, women, and children, all killed by blows to the head. We sequenced their genomes to between 1.1- and 3.9-fold coverage and performed kinship analyses that demonstrate that the individuals belonged to a large extended family. The bodies had been carefully laid out according to kin relationships by someone who evidently knew the deceased. From a population genetic viewpoint, the people from Koszyce are clearly distinct from neighboring Corded Ware groups because of their lack of steppe-related ancestry. Although the reason for the massacre is unknown, it is possible that it was connected with the expansion of Corded Ware groups, which may have resulted in competition for resources and violent conflict. Together with the archaeological evidence, these analyses provide an unprecedented level of insight into the kinship structure and social behavior of a Late Neolithic community.

This article presents the results of analyses of relics made out of wood that were discovered during the investigation of the Yampil Barrow Complex (Ukraine, Vinnitsa Oblast) in the period 2010-2015 in respect to the graves of Eneolithic communities, Yamnaya culture, Catacomb culture, Noua culture and the Iron Age. The research has documented a process of the selection of wood used in funerary rituals in the 4th to 2nd mill. BC and the choice of tree species present in stenothermal climax forests (Quercus sp., Fraxinus sp.).

This paper presents a newly developed model that links the destruction processes of wattle-and-daub houses and the internal chronology of sites. By examining the weight and spatial distribution of burned daub, our model explicates the relative chronological sequence of the structures and nearby associated features. A three-step analytical procedure allows for the specification and self-checking of model outcomes. We verify the model by its application to data from Mrowino site 3 (western Poland) and confirm its utility for re-assessing the sequence of Funnel Beaker culture settlement structures. The obtained results are confirmed by previous work detailing the stratigraphy of pits, the distribution and seriation of pottery and radiocarbon dating.

This paper presents the experiments with 14 C dating of two potsherds, which contained carbon dispersed rather homogeneously in their clay fabric. After AAA treatment, the potsherds still appeared to be contaminated with young carbon, presumably connected with humic acids. To make removal of humic acids more effective, we treated the sherds with HF acid of different concentration. The 14 C results obtained demonstrate that HF treatment indeed helps to remove humic contaminants, but it also mobilizes carbon bound to raw clay, which may make 14 C dates too old. We conclude therefore, that using a simple combination of HF and AAA treatment seems insufficient in reliable 14 C dating of carbon homogeneously dispersed in the volume of potsherds.

The age and properties of illuvial bands in sandy soils were determined using archaeological and radiocarbon methods at a neolithic archaeological site at Opatowice (Kujawy, central Poland). The results indicate that the formation of illuvial bands started not earlier than the beginning of the Subboreal period (4800-4700 BP). These bands cannot be treated as relics from the end of the Vistulian (Wisconsinan) glaciation as is suggested by some authors. The paleopedological analyses show that the illuvial bands were formed by pedogenic processes (a peculiar kind of lessivage).

Cet article presente les derniers resultats de la recherche sur la transition du Neolithique a l'âge du Bronze en Cujavie au 3eme millenaire av. J.-C., alors une des regions d'implantation et d'essor culturel les plus importantes de la plaine polonaise. Le modele des transformations culturelles elabore pour cette periode de la prehistoire repose sur deux theses principales, qui supposent une continuite des traditions neolithiques et leur survivance jusqu'au debut de l'âge du Bronze, ainsi que la coexistence de groupes d'heritage culturel different. Cet article caracterise egalement les unites culturelles identifiables pour la Cujavie du 3eme millenaire, soit la civilisation des Trichter-Becher tardive, la civilisation des Kugelamphoren classique et tardive, le Corde, une variante locale des groupes issus du Campaniforme (la culture d'Iwno), le groupe de Dobre, ainsi que les groupes des forets de l'Europe orientale. Les auteurs presentent les arguments soutenant les deux theses avancees et mettent l'accent sur les emprunts reciproques faits dans le domaine de la culture materielle et des coutumes. Ils ont egalement fait une analyse critique de la serie des datations au carbone 14.

Biomarker and stable isotopic analysis of lipid residues from perforated pottery vessels from sixth millennium bc Europe are consistent with these vessels having been used for making cheese, a low-lactose dairy product with digestion and storage advantages for the prehistoric lactose-intolerant farming communities. Dairying was an important innovation in early agriculture — despite the fact that the first dairy farmers were unable to metabolize lactose. One way of making milk more palatable to the lactose intolerant is to turn it into cheese, a process that involves straining the fat-rich curds from the lactose-containing whey. In this study Richard Evershed and colleagues report the presence of organic residues on pottery shards from enigmatic pottery vessels produced widely in settlements of the earliest farmers in northern Europe about 7,500 years ago. The vessels exhibit numerous millimetre-sized holes, which were postulated to be cheese strainers in 1984 by Peter Bogucki, a co-author on this current paper. That idea is now supported by the chemical evidence. The introduction of dairying was a critical step in early agriculture, with milk products being rapidly adopted as a major component of the diets of prehistoric farmers and pottery-using late hunter-gatherers1,2,3,4,5. The processing of milk, particularly the production of cheese, would have been a critical development because it not only allowed the preservation of milk products in a non-perishable and transportable form, but also it made milk a more digestible commodity for early prehistoric farmers6,7,8,9,10. The finding of abundant milk residues in pottery vessels from seventh millennium sites from north-western Anatolia provided the earliest evidence of milk processing, although the exact practice could not be explicitly defined1. Notably, the discovery of potsherds pierced with small holes appear at early Neolithic sites in temperate Europe in the sixth millennium bc and have been interpreted typologically as ‘cheese-strainers’10, although a direct association with milk processing has not yet been demonstrated. Organic residues preserved in pottery vessels have provided direct evidence for early milk use in the Neolithic period in the Near East and south-eastern Europe, north Africa, Denmark and the British Isles, based on the δ13C and Δ13C values of the major fatty acids in milk1,2,3,4. Here we apply the same approach to investigate the function of sieves/strainer vessels, providing direct chemical evidence for their use in milk processing. The presence of abundant milk fat in these specialized vessels, comparable in form to modern cheese strainers11, provides compelling evidence for the vessels having being used to separate fat-rich milk curds from the lactose-containing whey. This new evidence emphasizes the importance of pottery vessels in processing dairy products, particularly in the manufacture of reduced-lactose milk products among lactose-intolerant prehistoric farming communities6,7.

Archaeological site no. 3 at Mrowino is located on the Polish Lowland, in the Greater Poland region. It was excavated from 1973 until 1980. The excavation produced very rich movable finds, with the core of them being formed by Funnel Beaker culture (FBC) ceramics. The collections hold over 37,500 FBC pottery shards and several intact or reconstructed vessels. The vast majority of pottery comes from an FBC settlement dated to 3300-3150 BC. The pottery set includes vessels of clear Baden culture connections. For the mineral-ogical and petrographic study, 40 samples were selected to identify mineral and rock components of the ceramic body and compare the ways of raw-material preparation. In the studied samples, boulder clay in all probability was used to make the vessels. All studied samples were made from clay with grog and a small amount of sand as temper. In addition, several samples contained igneous rock crumbs. To find out if this was a deliberate or accidental admixture, it is necessary to carry out further research.