Based on research conducted during my three-year Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship at the Austrian Archaeological Institute and the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, this talk explores what socio-cultural anthropology can bring to the growing dialogue between archaeology and archaeogenetics. Ancient DNA has transformed how we reconstruct kinship and social organization in the past, but genetic relatedness is not synonymous with social relatedness or kinship. Drawing on archaeological, genetic, and ethnographic evidence from my X-KIN project, I examine households, burial practices, gender, and social belonging to ask how people in the past created and negotiated kinship beyond biological ancestry. I show how bringing anthropological perspectives into ancient DNA research can complicate, and ultimately enrich, our understanding of how people became, and were recognized as, kin.