Bronze Age child burials reveal gender-linked funeral customs 4,000 years ago

In Bronze Age communities of present-day Serbia, boys and girls did not have the same burial treatments as adult men and women. Even children who died at a young age received different burial treatment, with rules that distinguished males from females, with the direction of their heads and position of their bodies following different traditions. A new study published in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, which analysed 77 children and young individuals from two Bronze Age cemeteries, has confirmed this practice using proteins preserved in ancient teeth.The research examined Mokrin and Ostojićevo, two cemeteries associated with the Maros culture, which occupied parts of present-day Serbia, Hungary and Romania during the Bronze Age. Mokrin was used between approximately 2100 and 1800 BC, while the Maros cemetery at Ostojićevo dates to around 1900–1550 BC.