Abstract
The history of the British Isles and Ireland is characterized by multiple periods of major cultural change, including the influential transformation after the end of Roman rule, which precipitated shifts in language, settlement patterns and material culture 1. The extent to which migration from continental Europe mediated these transitions is a matter of long-standing debate 2–4. Here we study genome-wide ancient DNA from 460 medieval northwestern Europeans—including 278 individuals from England—alongside archaeological data, to infer contemporary population dynamics. We identify a substantial increase of continental northern European ancestry in early medieval England, which is closely related to the early medieval and present-day inhabitants of Germany and Denmark, implying large-scale substantial migration across the North Sea into Britain during the Early Middle Ages. As a result, the individuals who we analysed from eastern England derived up to 76% of their ancestry from the continental North Sea zone, albeit with substantial regional variation and heterogeneity within sites. We show that women with immigrant ancestry were more often furnished with grave goods than women with local ancestry, whereas men with weapons were as likely not to be of immigrant ancestry. A comparison with present-day Britain indicates that subsequent demographic events reduced the fraction of continental northern European ancestry while introducing further ancestry components into the English gene pool, including substantial southwestern European ancestry most closely related to that seen in Iron Age France 5,6.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 112-119 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Nature |
| Volume | 610 |
| Issue number | 7930 |
| Early online date | 21 Sept 2022 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 6 Oct 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank the Brighton & Hove Museums and A. Maxted; the Stiftung Archäologie im rheinischen Braunkohlerevier; the Max Planck Society; N. Adamski and A. Claxton; and the Velux Foundations. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement number 851511). P.J. and K.D. were supported by a Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship awarded to M.B.R. and M.P. C.J.E. acknowledges support from The Leverhulme Trust via research project grant RPG-388. I.B., T. Booth, M.G.T. and S. Brace were supported by a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award (project number 100713/Z/12/Z). S. Beckett and M.V.T. thank R. Baldry and North West Norfolk History Society for funding of radiocarbon dating analyses. Sampling and DNA extraction of the samples from Groningen was funded by the European Funds for Regional Development and the Province of Groningen. We are grateful to the Museum für Archäologie in der Stiftung Schleswig-Holsteinische Landesmuseen Schloss Gottorf for providing samples from Schleswig Rathausmarkt. The ancient DNA laboratory work at Harvard University was supported by the US National Institutes of Health grant GM100233, by John Templeton Foundation grant 61220, by a gift from J.-F. Clin, by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and by the Allen Discovery Center program, a Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group advised program of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.
Funding Information:
We thank the Brighton & Hove Museums and A. Maxted; the Stiftung Archäologie im rheinischen Braunkohlerevier; the Max Planck Society; N. Adamski and A. Claxton; and the Velux Foundations. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement number 851511). P.J. and K.D. were supported by a Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship awarded to M.B.R. and M.P. C.J.E. acknowledges support from The Leverhulme Trust via research project grant RPG-388. I.B., T. Booth, M.G.T. and S. Brace were supported by a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award (project number 100713/Z/12/Z). S. Beckett and M.V.T. thank R. Baldry and North West Norfolk History Society for funding of radiocarbon dating analyses. Sampling and DNA extraction of the samples from Groningen was funded by the European Funds for Regional Development and the Province of Groningen. We are grateful to the Museum für Archäologie in der Stiftung Schleswig-Holsteinische Landesmuseen Schloss Gottorf for providing samples from Schleswig Rathausmarkt. The ancient DNA laboratory work at Harvard University was supported by the US National Institutes of Health grant GM100233, by John Templeton Foundation grant 61220, by a gift from J.-F. Clin, by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and by the Allen Discovery Center program, a Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group advised program of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).