Isotopic signatures and hereditary traits: snapshot of a Neolithic community in Germany R. Alexander Bentley 1 , Joachim Wahl 2 , T. Douglas Price 3 & Tim C. Atkinson 4 A group of Linearbandkeramik people at Talheim, Germany were previously found to have died at the same time, probably in a massacre, and the authors were able to ask some searching questions of their skeletons. The isotope signatures of strontium, oxygen and carbon, which gave information on diet and childhood region, showed up three groups which correlated with hereditary traits (derived previously from the analysis of the teeth). In the local group, there were many local children but no adult women, suggesting they had been selectively taken alive at the time of the massacre. Another group, with isotope signatures derived from upland areas, includes two men who may have been closely related. A third group has a composition suggestive of a nuclear family. The variations of one type of isotope signature with another suggested subtle interpretations, such as transhumance, and a probable labour division in the community between stockholders and cultivators. Here we see the ever-growing potential of these new methods for writing the ‘biographies’ of prehistoric skeletons. Keywords: Neolithic, Germany, LBK, Talheim, isotope analysis, hereditary traits, trans- humance Introduction The site of Talheim (c . 4900-4800 BC), a late Linearbandkeramik (LBK) community in the Neckar valley of Germany, yields a truly unique picture of Neolithic life because, unlike most cemeteries, Talheim very probably represents a group of people who lived at the same time and were then killed in a single event (Wahl 1985; Wahl & K¨ onig 1987; Wild et al. 2004; Price et al. 2008). Talheim is located about 10km south of Heilbronn and about 30km NNE of the LBK site of Vaihingen (Figure 1; Price et al. 2008; Krause 2000). The remains of 34 individuals recovered there include 18 adults and 16 children, all buried in a single pit 3m long 1 Department of Anthropology, Durham University, 43 Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HN, UK (Email: r.a.bentley@durham.ac.uk) 2 RP Stuttgart, Landesamt f¨ ur Denkmalpflege, Osteologie, Stromeyersdorfstraße 3, D-78467, Konstanz, Germany (Email: Joachim.Wahl@rps.bwl.de) 3 Department. of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, 1180 Observatory Dr., Madison, WI 53706-1393, USA (Email: tdprice@wisc.edu) 4 Department of Earth Sciences, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK (Email: t.atkinson@ucl.ac.uk) Received: 2 August 2006; Revised: 22 September 2006; Accepted: 18 January 2007 antiquity 82 (2008): 290–304 290