The Reconstruction of “Genetic Kinship” in Prehistoric Burial Complexes — Problems and Statistics

Establishment of kinship in burial complexes has been a desideratum for decades. In recent years, paleoanthropologists have attempted to conduct kinship analyses primarily by means of epigentic variants of the skull. As with other anthropological questions, teeth and maxillary bones seem well suited for the reconstruction of genetic kinship in skeletal material. The authors analyse incidence and distribution of hypodontia in a burial complex and from the distribution of the trait deduce possible genetic relations of it’s bearers. Statistical analysis was applied to test whether the distribution of the trait was random or whether it supports the hypothesis of burial in family-groups.