Examination of plague victims from a 17^th century AD hospital in Basel, Switzerland reveals the majority of those who died from the plague were working youths from lower social classes, showing how social status impacted disease mortality in the past just as much as it does today.

Ancient DNA analysis of individuals buried in chambered tombs from Early Neolithic northern Scotland finds some were closely related along the male line of descent, indicating paternal relatedness was an important social connection to the first Neolithic people in Britain and suggesting funerary landscapes were monumental signifiers of kinship and group identities.

Archaeologists have uncovered one of Scandinavia's earliest ship burials at the monumental burial mound of Herlaugshaugen, Norway, pre-dating the Viking Age and indicating pre-Viking cultural connections around the North Sea.