Digging the elite: richer graves, lighter skin?

A sword, a necklace and a row of pottery vessels can make an ancient grave look unmistakably distinguished. What they meant to the people who placed them there is harder to recover. Were they marking wealth, a family’s standing, a particular role, or the affection of the survivors?

In my earlier post Was the ancient elite tall, blonde, and light-skinned?, I explored whether genetic traits associated with appearance and education clustered in ancient populations. Here I bring burial furnishing directly into the comparison. The strongest current finding is that a genetic score pointing toward lighter untanned skin is associated with more richly furnished burials within the recorded cemeteries, even when an education-related genetic score enters the same model.

The education-score association is positive, smaller after that adjustment, and sensitive to influential burials. This shifts the emphasis of the story toward pigmentation-associated variation. The explanation could still involve ancestry, inherited family position or burial customs.

Was colourism already present in ancient Europe? Did the association reflect differences in ancestry, or could generations of elites spending more time indoors have favoured pigmentation adapted to their way of life?