Ancient burial practices and DNA research reveal that family goes beyond genetic relatedness

Field Museum

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Sabina Cveček documenting pottery assemblage from an ancient house from a 5,000-year old house at Çukuriçi Höyük in western Türkiye, offering insight into everyday life and kinship practices in Early Bronze Age households. Photo by Maria Röcklinger. 

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Credit: Photo by Maria Röcklinger.

You probably have a member of your family that you’re not related to by blood—a step-parent, an adopted cousin, your mom’s best friend who you grew up calling your aunt. They're indisputably part of your family, but a DNA test wouldn’t hint at your relationship. Archaeologists are finding that this holds true for families from thousands of years ago, too. By comparing ancient burial practices with genetic information gleaned from the remains, researchers show that it’s not uncommon for people who aren’t related by blood to be treated as members of the same family—which means that ancient DNA doesn’t tell the whole story of how families and societies worked.

“Even in prehistory, kinship was more than just blood relations,” says Sabina Cveček, an archaeologist and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow at the Field Museum in Chicago. “Many communities around the world have a concept of family that goes beyond this biological setting. So no matter how hard we push with ancient DNA research, we'll never know the whole story if we don't take diversity and cultural anthropological perspectives into account.” Cveček is one of the lead authors of a special issue of the Cambridge Archaeological Journal dedicated to how archaeologists, anthropologists, and geneticists determine the relationships between ancient people, and how genetic research plays a role in our understanding of these societies.

This special issue, which Cveček edited with Maanasa Raghavan (University of Chicago) and Penny Bickle (University of York), includes research about the relationship between family and genetic relatedness around the world, over the course of thousands of years. Cveček, Raghavan, and Bickle emphasized in their introductory piece that kinship cannot be reduced to genetic relatedness, and that recent archaeogenetic work—while powerful—has tended to privilege biological descent and linear pedigrees.

“The piece intervenes by showing that this is only one 'code' of relatedness. Instead, ancient kinship research is in need of new approaches by closely considering ethics of sampling human remains, interdisciplinary training, collaborative research design, and new interpretations that consider multiple ways of becoming kin,” says Cveček.

The team reviewed decades’ worth of previous archaeological and genetic studies from sites in Europe and western Asia. For instance, at a site Çatalhöyük in what’s now Türkiye (sometimes called Turkey), burials  were often found below the house floors of ancient houses from 8,000 years ago.”Archaeologists initially assumed that people buried within the same house would be genetically related,” says Cveček. “But now, it is possible to map those people through ancient DNA analysis on genetic pedigrees, and geneticists often found people buried within the same house who are not at all genetically related, indicating social proximity rather than exclusively blood relations made kin at the site.”

DNA degrades over time, but traces of DNA can remain inside human bones, including small bones such as petrous bone in the inner ear. In the past few decades, scientists have been able to extract DNA from these ancient bones and sequence it. The resulting genetic sequences are generally patchy, so “geneticists  need to do a lot of computational analysis and statistics with genetic signatures from those broken pieces of ancient DNA to actually reconstruct biological relatedness of the past,” says Cveček.

These findings suggest that in these ancient communities, the concept of family wasn’t only dictated by blood. Since the same is true of many families today, that may not seem like an earth-shattering discovery. But it could be a critical piece of information for researchers attempting to reconstruct how ancient cultures built and passed down their family ties. DNA doesn’t always tell the whole story.

“One of the aims of this paper is to debunk the Western perceptions of family kinship, which often seems to be based on blood. We cannot have just one proxy for understanding family or kinship around the world,” says Cveček.

This broader concept of family goes beyond archaeological and anthropological research—we run into it every day when we handle health insurance, housing, childcare, and education. “The old saying, that it takes a village to raise a child, is true,” says Cveček. “We all invest time and labor to build a world that looks after people beyond our biological dependents.” Caring for people who aren’t blood-related to us is part of what makes us human.

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Journal

Cambridge Archaeological Journal

Article Title

Kinship Trouble : What, When, Where, Why, and How — and So What?

Article Publication Date

14-Apr-2026

 

Another web in the wall: Researchers discover new spider species in Colombia and name it after Pink Floyd

Pensoft Publishers

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Pikelinia floydmuraria, male paratype.

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Credit: Leonardo Delgado-Santa

A Rock-and-Roll Tribute to an Urban Dweller

A team of researchers from institutions across South America have expanded scholarly knowledge of the Pikelinia spider genus, with their recent discovery of a new crevice weaver species: Pikelinia floydmuraria. The new species name is a creative tribute to the legendary rock band Pink Floyd, while simultaneously referencing the spider’s specific habitat. “Muraria,” derived from the Latin word for “wall”, reflects the species’ tendency to reside in the walls of buildings, though indeed also alludes to the iconic Pink Floyd album, The Wall. The research was published in the open-access journal Zoosytematics and Evolution.

Hunting strategy

Despite measuring only 3 to 4 millimeters in length, these synanthropic (urban-dwelling) spiders may play a significant role in managing household pests. Dietary analyses of P. floydmuraria and a related Pikelinia population in Armenia, Colombia, revealed a diet heavily consisting of Hymenoptera (such as ants), Diptera (flies and mosquitoes), and Coleoptera (beetles).

Remarkably, the researchers observed the Pikelinia spiders capturing and consuming ants up to six times their own prosoma (body) size. Furthermore, the study noted that these spiders consistently prey upon known urban pests, including mosquitoes (Culicidae) and houseflies (Muscidae). The researchers propose that by building their webs near artificial lights, the spiders have developed a strategic adaptation to efficiently trap phototactic (light-attracted) insects, maintaining a healthier balance in the urban environment.

Solving a Galapagos Mystery

In addition to describing the new Colombian species, the study also provided important insights into a related spider from the Galapagos Islands. For the first time, researchers fully described and illustrated the female internal genitalia of Pikelinia fasciata, an endemic Galapagos species originally discovered in 1902. The morphological similarities between the Galapagos species and the newly discovered Colombian species - such as nearly identical male palpal structures - suggest a close evolutionary relationship, despite the Pacific Ocean separating them. However, it remains a mystery as to whether these traits reflect shared ancestry or similar ecological adaptations.

Looking Forward

The discovery of P. floydmuraria marks only the second recorded species of the Pikelinia genus in Colombia. The researchers advocate for further molecular and DNA-based dietary analyses to map the spider's evolutionary history, definitively determine its biogeographic origin, and quantify its full potential as a natural regulator of urban pests.

Pikelinia floydmuraria from Tolima, Female Juvenile, attacking a cockroach on the web.

Pikelinia floydmuraria 

Credit

Julio C. González-Gómez

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Journal

Zoosystematics and Evolution

Article Title

Another web in the wall: A new Pikelinia Mello-Leitão, 1946 (Araneae, Filistatidae) from Colombia, with notes on its diet and description of the female genitalia of P. fasciata (Banks, 1902)

 

Ultrasensitive test reveals evidence of previously undetected tuberculosis in Boston Hospital patients

Researchers detect TB DNA in unexpected number of U.S.-born patients, including striking link to life-threatening sickle cell disease complications

Boston University

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Researchers at Boston University have discovered an unexpectedly high prevalence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis DNA (TB DNA) in patients hospitalized in Boston, suggesting that tuberculosis disease may be significantly underdiagnosed in the United States. The findings, published today in Nature Communications, could reshape how clinicians approach tuberculosis (TB) detection and help accelerate progress toward elimination goals.

Using an ultrasensitive molecular assay developed at Boston University called the Totally Optimized PCR (TOP) TB assay, researchers detected TB DNA in 12-16 percent of respiratory samples from predominantly U.S.-born patients at Boston Medical Center – far higher than expected given Boston's low TB incidence rate. Most striking was the finding that all three patients diagnosed during the study period with acute chest syndrome, a life-threatening complication of sickle cell disease, tested positive for TB DNA.

"We began this research with the intent of sourcing respiratory samples to support the ongoing development of a new molecular assay for TB," said Dr. Guillermo Madico, scientist at Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) and co-inventor of the TOP TB assay. "What we found was completely unexpected. Our ultrasensitive test is detecting Mycobacterium tuberculosis DNA in patients who are unlikely to be diagnosed with TB using current methods. This opens the possibility that there could be thousands of Americans infected with forms of tuberculosis disease that remain hidden from our current diagnostic tools – putting them at risk of developing more serious complications or potentially transmitting the disease to others.”

Tuberculosis remains the leading cause of death from an infectious disease globally. In the United States, TB killed nearly 600 people and sickened more than 9,600 in 2023, with an estimated 13 million people carrying latent TB infection. Despite decades of progress, the U.S. elimination campaign has stalled, with the number of new infections increasing between 2021-2024.

The Boston University team, led by Dr. Madico and Dr. Edward C. Jones-López, conducted three separate studies over six years, testing 297 respiratory samples from patients hospitalized at Boston Medical Center and St. Elizabeth's Medical Center. The TOP TB assay proved far more sensitive than standard mycobacterial cultures and other molecular tests, detecting TB DNA in samples that tested negative by conventional methods.

The study found that 75 percent of TB DNA-positive patients were age 50 or older, consistent with U.S. TB epidemiology where most cases result from reactivation of latent infections. Interestingly, most TB DNA-positive patients tested negative on standard TB infection tests (tuberculin skin tests or interferon-gamma release assays), a poorly understood phenomenon associated with advanced age and poor outcomes.

"These findings suggest we may be missing a significant burden of TB disease, particularly in older Americans and in patients with certain underlying conditions," said Dr. Jones-López, who conducted the research while at Boston Medical Center and Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. "Most concerning is the potential association with acute chest syndrome in sickle cell patients. If confirmed and expanded upon in larger studies, this finding could lead to better health outcomes for patients with this potentially life-threatening condition.”

The researchers emphasize that these preliminary findings require confirmation in larger, prospective multicenter studies that include comprehensive clinical, radiological, immunological, and microbiological correlation. However, they argue the evidence warrants immediate dissemination given potential implications for medical care and public health.

The TOP TB assay, which targets a gene involved in M. tuberculosis cell wall assembly, has been validated in over 400 patients with suspected TB in Uganda, Brazil, and the United States. While currently a research-use-only tool pending regulatory clearance, the technology demonstrates how molecular diagnostics with sensitivity superior to culture are transforming infectious disease detection.

The research team notes that current TB diagnostic strategies may be hampered by over-reliance on mycobacterial cultures, which require viable, actively growing bacteria. The TOP assay's ability to detect very low levels of TB DNA may identify earlier disease stages or variants that don't fit traditional definitions – challenging clinicians and researchers to reconsider how TB disease is classified and diagnosed.

About the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) is a specialized research facility equipped with Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) and Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) laboratories, enabling scientists to safely study emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. Our research focuses on understanding how pathogens cause disease and translating these findings into diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics that protect human health. Through strategic partnerships with government agencies, industry, and academic institutions, NEIDL accelerates the development of life-saving solutions for emerging infectious threats. To learn more, visit www.bu.edu/neidl/.

Technical Note for Journalists: The study detected Mycobacterium tuberculosis DNA, not viable bacteria, in patient samples. The clinical significance and transmissibility of these findings require further investigation. High-resolution images and additional technical details are available upon request.

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Journal

Nature

Method of Research

Case study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Unexpected Detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis DNA in US-Born Patients in Putative Association with Clinical Syndromes

Article Publication Date

14-Apr-2026

COI Statement

Dr. Jones-López and Dr. Madico are co-inventors of TOP TB assay’s primers and probes. The invention is owned by Boston Medical Center/ Boston University Medical School, which has obtained an international patent application (US Patent and Trademark Office No. 10,190,176 B2). The remaining authors declare no competing interests.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Forensic linguistics reveals the playbook of trust

New research shows how trust develops in real time - and how it is managed, repaired, and maintained in conversation, to ensure future collaboration.

University of Birmingham

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New research has revealed the linguistic moves made by energy traders to manipulate trust and encourage collusion in illicit activity, misleading clients and officials, and supporting forms of corruption that spanned many organisations.

Forensic linguists from the University of Birmingham looked at how trust develops in real time, and how it is managed, repaired, and maintained in conversation, to ensure future collaboration.

The study, published by Cambridge University Press, used records from the Enron scandal.  This was no ordinary fraud, and it went beyond creative accounting.  Enron traders secured the trust of people working in external organizations to gain access to and control energy infrastructure, artificially constraining supply and driving up market prices.

These coordinated market moves were often discussed and arranged on the phone – and the clandestine conversations were taped, creating a ‘corpus’ of transcripts that is the world’s largest collection of spoken language records from illegal activity. 

Linguistic analysis of these transcripts, led by Dr Matteo Fuoli, showed a larger share of speech by Enron traders dedicated to trust management compared to external speakers. 

It also revealed a playbook of trust-related moves, which fell into five basic categories: bond, build, confide, probe, and repair. 

Dr Fuoli said: “Access to covert conversations is rare.  The size of the corpus meant we were able to produce a comprehensive framework for conversational tactics that can be used to build and manage trust and legitimize wrong-doing.” 

The analysis showed ‘bond’ moves predominated in the conversations, with Enron traders fostering emotional connection, and projecting a persona of a friendly and supportive listener. 

The ‘build trust’ moves provided rational arguments about why the listener should trust the speaker, including boasting to project competence. 

Unsurprisingly, Enron traders used ‘confide’ moves, including sharing privileged information, significantly more often than external speakers, and while ‘probe’ moves were mostly used by external speakers, Enron speakers used ‘repair’ moves frequently, and these were primarily defensive (justification, or shifting the blame), with apologies and outright denials being rare.

Dr Fuoli is part of Lingsight, a team of world-class linguists from the University of Birmingham, UK, with a track record that includes major publicly-funded research projects and collaborations with top technology firms. 

Dr Matteo Fuoli: “The framework has a diagnostic potential and can inform practical interventions in combating fraud such as phishing or romance scams, but also online radicalization in extremist discussion forums, and ideological harm networks like incel.  It could also be used to identify the roles and relationships within a specific criminal network.”

“Similarly, studying the trust dynamics within extremist or ideological harm networks online could deepen our understanding of how and why individuals are drawn to these groups and guide the development of well-informed social policies and educational interventions.”

 

Racial profiling and aggressive policing can affect infant health, UO research finds

The study is the first to investigate how stop-and-frisk policies affect newborn health

University of Oregon

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Aggressive policing tactics like stop-and-frisk are linked to worse newborn health outcomes in neighborhoods where such tactics are most pervasive, University of Oregon research finds.

Babies of non-Hispanic Black mothers had lower birth weights in New York City neighborhoods where police made more on-the-street stops, even when controlling for variables like income and education, according to the research, which analyzed data from 2006 to 2013.

The study is the first to examine the effects of overall community exposure to police stops on newborn wellness, an important public health metric. The findings were published in the journal Social Science & Medicine.

“This study offers important insights for public safety and efforts to reduce gaps for infant health disparities that correlate with race,” said study co-author Nicole Ngo, an associate professor in the UO’s School of Planning, Public Policy and Management in the College of Design.

“People who don’t have direct interactions with police could still be affected by stop-and-frisk,” Ngo said. “Those effects on pregnant mothers and their children could lead to health problems across generations.”

Stop-and-frisk, a crime prevention program adopted by New York City in the 1990s, entails detaining, questioning and searching people when police officers have a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been, or will be, committed.

But stop-and-frisk sowed mistrust and anxiety, especially among minority populations. In 2013, a federal judge found the program violated the constitutional rights of minorities by disproportionally targeting Black and Hispanic populations.

The ruling did not end the practice but led to changes in how it was done. Today, similar practices play out in communities across the United States.

“Racism has been recognized as a public health threat,” Ngo said. “However, it’s difficult to measure exposure to racism. This specific police activity offers a measurable indicator for researching how racial bias may drive health disparities.”

Ideally, policing and public health share a common goal to protect communities, such as efforts to reduce traffic accidents, Ngo said. But aggressive policing practices associated with racial profiling may negatively impact public health, even if they curb crime.

To connect the dots, Ngo and co-author James Rising at the University of Delaware investigated how the number of police stops per capita in different neighborhoods affected infant health, a key indicator of safety and social welfare.

The duo pored over information about police stops and health benchmarks for newborns from 2006 to 2013. They looked at infant birth weights, gestational ages and tests that hospitals use to measure newborn health and compared police stops per capita in the neighborhoods where the mothers lived while pregnant.

After overlaying the police stop and health data, they discovered that neighborhoods with more stops correlated with worse infant health disparities.

The greatest effects on birth weight, a widely used public health indicator, occurred in non-Hispanic Black mothers: a decrease of 1.9 grams from a 10% increase in community exposure to police stops.

The health effects were statistically small but significant, Ngo said. Small reductions in birth weight have been linked to declines in education and income.

The data does not indicate if the mothers were stopped, observed stops or were simply aware of them. However, the general perception of living in a neighborhood with racial profiling and fears of being targeted could be connected to health impacts.

The most active neighborhoods in the study experienced triple the median number of stops per capita.

The researchers used statistical methods to control for other factors that can also affect infant health. For example, mothers in neighborhoods with more police stops may differ from mothers in other neighborhoods in ways that also affect infant health such as income, education, smoking or alcohol consumption.

Ngo emphasized this research covers one city during a specific period of time, providing a snapshot of how policing and public health data correlate. Though observational studies like these don’t prove causation, they make connections that could not be practically or ethically tested with lab experiments.

“The results make a compelling case,” Ngo said. “Any police practice with clear evidence of racial profiling can do more harm than good for public safety.”

— By Ed Dorsch, University Communications

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Journal

Social Science & Medicine

Article Title

Does aggressive policing worsen infant health disparities? Evidence from ‘Stop and Frisk’ in New York City

 

OU researcher helping lead $9.5M global water modeling project

University of Oklahoma

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Yanhua Xie, Ph.D.

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Credit: University of Oklahoma/Vikki Hladiuk

NORMAN, Okla. – Fresh water is essential to human life, but growing populations, economic development and changing climates have made it more difficult to maintain. A University of Oklahoma researcher is helping address this problem by creating groundbreaking models and datasets of agricultural irrigation as part of an international team simulating Earth’s water system to gather insights into how to better use and preserve it.

Yanhua Xie, an assistant professor in OU’s College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences, is one of four principal investigators for the Re-Analysis of Water for Society (RAWS) project. He is collaborating with experts from other academic institutions, NGOs and stakeholders to create an in-depth analysis of how terrestrial water has changed worldwide over the past 60 years.

The project is backed by a five-year, $9.5 million grant from the Schmidt Sciences’ Virtual Institute for Earth’s Water (VIEW). The funding includes support for an OU team of two postdoctoral researchers, one Ph.D. student and two undergraduates to assist Xie in the project.

To help address global water challenges, the international team aims to develop advanced tools and publicly available datasets necessary for modeling how terrestrial water flows across ecosystems, an area where current models lack sufficient spatial detail and temporal frequency. By doing so, the researchers will shed light on how humans can best manage fresh water for long-term sustainability.

“We use too much water as humans,” Xie said. “At the same time, we pollute water through different anthropogenic activities like food production and economic activities.”

The team’s outputs will include AI-assisted models of the terrestrial water system at unprecedented resolution, down to one square kilometer and updated daily. These high-resolution datasets will cover both data-rich countries like the U.S. and regions that lack significant detail.

As a geospatial data scientist, Xie is leading the project’s efforts to develop scalable geospatial AI models to produce high-resolution maps of agricultural water use and infrastructure – the largest consumer of global fresh water – over the past six decades. The datasets are expected to significantly improve the representation of human water use, especially agricultural irrigation, in global water models.

“With different irrigation technologies, water use efficiency varies significantly,” Xie explained. “Rice fields in Arkansas are usually flooded with low water use efficiency, while citrus orchards in California commonly use drip irrigation systems, which can exceed 90% efficiency.”

Xie’s research will also include talking with water managers connected to the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the world’s largest groundwater sources, which is currently being depleted. The aquifer spans eight U.S. states, including western Oklahoma.

Insights from this region, together with many other water-stressed areas such as the Central Valley in California and the Indo-Gangetic Plain in South Asia, will help refine global water models and translate their outputs into actionable tools and data products.

The team’s work will be made public to support policymakers and resource managers worldwide.

“We have very limited fresh water, and demand is increasing” Xie said. “We are forming an interdisciplinary team to inform better, more sustainable water management and policy for the future.”

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About the project

“RAWS: Re-Analysis of Water for Society” is funded by a $9.5 million grant from the Schmidt Sciences’ Virtual Institute for Earth’s Water and is being led by principal investigators from the University of Oklahoma, Utrecht University, Virginia Tech and the Euro Mediterranean Center for Climate Change.

About the University of Oklahoma

Founded in 1890, the University of Oklahoma is a public research university located in Norman, Oklahoma. As the state’s flagship university, OU serves the educational, cultural, economic and health care needs of the state, region and nation. For more information about the university, visit www.ou.edu.