Ancestry and identity in the Balkans and the Carpathian basin between the 5th and 3rd millennia cal BC

Thousands of kurgans (burial mounds) were built on the plains landscapes of the Balkans and the Carpathian basin during the first half of the 3rd millennium cal BC. For a long time, they have been interpreted as belonging to ‘newcomers’, that is, steppe migrants who already started to arrive in the 5th millennium cal BC, in contrast to flat burial grounds traditionally assigned to ‘local’ communities. By bringing together information about the genetic ancestry of individuals and the mortuary archaeology of burial practices, we investigate the relationship between descent and identity in the kurgans and flat cemeteries of the region. While many individuals with no steppe-related ancestry are buried according to Balkan-Carpathian basin burial practices, we find a significant number of them were also buried following Pontic-Caspian steppe practices. Our results show that operating with the prevalent dichotomy only obscures the complexity of processes taking place in the region in the second half of the 4th millennium and first half of the 3rd millennium cal BC, suggesting ancestry is at most one factor amongst others contributing to social identity.