DNA showed a woman in Mycenae's royal Grave Circle B was buried beside her brother, by right of birth, not as a wife

Grave Circle B at Mycenae was used from about 1675 to 1550 BC and overlaps the more famous Grave Circle A by about 50 years. Its 35 burials held weapons, pottery, gold ornaments and an electrum face mask. Scholars had asked whether the graves held rival dynasties or branches of one family. John Prag of the Manchester Museum and Richard Neave rebuilt the faces of the seven best-preserved skulls. They fell into three groups, and one heart-shaped group included a man and a woman. A Manchester team led by Terence Brown and Keri Brown, with Abigail Bouwman, tested 22 skeletons. No nuclear DNA survived. Mitochondrial DNA came from four. The man, Gamma 55, and the woman, Gamma 58, shared a maternal lineage, and with the faces and the grave layout the team concluded they were brother and sister. They were buried together in a richly furnished grave. Brown said she was buried there not because of a marriage but because she "held a position of authority by right of birth." The 2008 paper also warned that ancient DNA is hard to use for kinship in Greece, where it survives poorly. Grave Circle A yielded none. The reconstructed faces are shown in the Manchester Museum.