The GenArchivist Forum

I mentioned recently that I attended a viewing of the Marlow Warlord's artefacts and was told by archaeologists there that the chieftain's aDNA sample will feature in a coming Francis Crick Institute study on Anglo-Saxon aDNA.

After a bit of idle Googling tonight I wonder whether the archaeologists may have been slightly muddled and were referring instead to this work at Francis Crick led by Pontus Skoglund, which I remember us discussing on AG when this news broke in 2019:

"Over five years, researchers will sequence the whole-genomes of more than 1,000 ancient British people, using skeletal samples from the last 5,000 years."

And:

"All ancient genomic data gathered throughout the project will be made publicly available, providing a valuable resource for studying short-term human evolution."

At the same time, it strikes me as entirely plausible that there will indeed be a specifically Anglo-Saxon spin-off paper as a result of this, and in line with what the archaeologists said. It's a subject that's guaranteed to get plenty of publicity, after all.

A bit more Googling gives hints of what may be in store. There was this from the Saffron Walden Reporter in Essex early last year:

"Ancient DNA from the skeletal remains of people buried in Uttlesford many hundreds of years ago has been analysed in the project with the Francis Crick Institute. Tiny samples were taken from 63 burials for DNA analysis.Saffron Walden Museum said that most of the burials sampled are from the Anglo-Saxon populations of Saffron Walden and Wicken Bonhunt, but they also included a few Romano-British burials from Great Chesterford and a late Iron Age or early Roman burial from Stansted Airport."

I also found this from Brighton & Hove Museums, which refers to the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Rookery Hill, Bishopstone, East Sussex (I can't remember whether we ever raised this on AG):

"Work on the bones will be conducted at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery in Summer 2023 which will reveal fascinating insights into the Anglo-Saxon community, their health and diet. Dr Tom Booth of The Francis Crick Institute will obtain ancient DNA (aDNA) samples with the aim of establishing the geographical origins of the Migration Period people buried in the cemetery."

That line in the above passage "with the aim of establishing the geographical origins of the Migration Period people" gives me cause to hope that the archaeologists were right because that's a much more specific goal than the purposes of Skoglund's work as stated in the link above, which include health.

You might remember that Rookery Hill featured in Gretzinger et al's 2022 groundbreaking paper on the Anglo-Saxons, where I believe there were nine samples from the site with overall a relatively low level of CNE (Germanic) ancestry. At least 118 graves have been found at Rookery Hill so there could be a good number of coming samples from there in the Francis Crick work.

Perhaps some of you know more about this but I assume we'll see more than just the Marlow Warlord, Essex and Sussex samples in whatever paper is eventually published, and it seems to me that it might approach Gretzinger's in scope. Nice to have something to look forward to on the Anglo-Saxon front and I guess we might be looking at late next year for some kind of publication. The archaeologists I spoke to expected the Marlow Warlord's results by the end of this year.

Thanks for the update JonikW. Definitely looking forward to more Anglo-Saxon samples from England to study. I’d also imagine that there must be tons of Viking Age samples from England as well besides the ones mentioned in the 2020 study? Patience is definitely a virtue in this hobby, but hopefully there’s a lot more data for us to analyze in the near future.

Excellent, always looking forward to new Anglo-Saxon samples. I posted this in the other forum, but I'll post it here as well - seems like a good thread for updates on finds and planned DNA analysis.

Anglo-Saxon burial site with remains of 22 people found near Lincolnshire village 

“An Anglo-Saxon burial site has been unearthed, complete with the remains of 22 people, on the outskirts of a Lincolnshire village. The remains of 16 adults, four teenagers and two children were excavated by teams from Wessex Archaeology and Headland Archaeology near the village of Donington.

They will be subjected to radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis in the near future to get an idea of just how old they are, with the Anglo-Saxons having been around between 410 and 1066.”

www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/anglo-saxon-burial-site-with-remains-of-22-people-found-near-lincolnshire-village/ar-AA1eUD9w

(10-22-2023, 05:00 AM)MrI1 Wrote: [ -> ]Thanks for the update JonikW. Definitely looking forward to more Anglo-Saxon samples from England to study. I’d also imagine that there must be tons of Viking Age samples from England as well besides the ones mentioned in the 2020 study? Patience is definitely a virtue in this hobby, but hopefully there’s a lot more data for us to analyze in the near future.

I'm certainly looking forward to some Viking Age samples as well, I'd really like to see some from the Danelaw.

(10-22-2023, 04:14 PM)NewEnglander Wrote: [ -> ]Excellent, always looking forward to new Anglo-Saxon samples. I posted this in the other forum, but I'll post it here as well - seems like a good thread for updates on finds and planned DNA analysis.

Anglo-Saxon burial site with remains of 22 people found near Lincolnshire village 

“An Anglo-Saxon burial site has been unearthed, complete with the remains of 22 people, on the outskirts of a Lincolnshire village. The remains of 16 adults, four teenagers and two children were excavated by teams from Wessex Archaeology and Headland Archaeology near the village of Donington.

They will be subjected to radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis in the near future to get an idea of just how old they are, with the Anglo-Saxons having been around between 410 and 1066.”

www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/anglo-saxon-burial-site-with-remains-of-22-people-found-near-lincolnshire-village/ar-AA1eUD9w

Great to see you've joined us here NewEnglander. Interesting (and quite fitting) to see that these remains were found during work on the new energy link between England and Denmark. 

There must be a good chance that these skeletal remains are the descendants of the earlier cremation burial people at the site, unless the early cemetery turns out to be mixed rite cremation/inhumation as sometimes happened in the pagan period when people were joining the community from places on the continent and in Scandinavia with varying burial practices.

I see this site is only about 20 miles away from the famous cemetery at Loveden Hill. 

One of the big finds from there is a runic urn. You can see it in 3D here. I tried to make a clay copy of that urn in the summer... I ended up binning the feeble attempt and emerging with a deeper respect for the craftsmen/women of the time who worked without a wheel. I did manage to preserve a shred of self dignity by making instead a small clay plaque with various inscribed rune rows that I plan to subtly paint and then display in our bedroom soon. :-)

(10-22-2023, 05:30 PM)JonikW Wrote: [ -> ]

(10-22-2023, 04:14 PM)NewEnglander Wrote: [ -> ]Excellent, always looking forward to new Anglo-Saxon samples. I posted this in the other forum, but I'll post it here as well - seems like a good thread for updates on finds and planned DNA analysis.

Anglo-Saxon burial site with remains of 22 people found near Lincolnshire village 

“An Anglo-Saxon burial site has been unearthed, complete with the remains of 22 people, on the outskirts of a Lincolnshire village. The remains of 16 adults, four teenagers and two children were excavated by teams from Wessex Archaeology and Headland Archaeology near the village of Donington.

They will be subjected to radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis in the near future to get an idea of just how old they are, with the Anglo-Saxons having been around between 410 and 1066.”

www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/anglo-saxon-burial-site-with-remains-of-22-people-found-near-lincolnshire-village/ar-AA1eUD9w

Great to see you've joined us here NewEnglander. Interesting (and quite fitting) to see that these remains were found during work on the new energy link between England and Denmark. 

There must be a good chance that these skeletal remains are the descendants of the earlier cremation burial people at the site, unless the early cemetery turns out to be mixed rite cremation/inhumation as sometimes happened in the pagan period when people were joining the community from places on the continent and in Scandinavia with varying burial practices.

I see this site is only about 20 miles away from the famous cemetery at Loveden Hill. 

One of the big finds from there is a runic urn. You can see it in 3D here. I tried to make a clay copy of that urn in the summer... I ended up binning the feeble attempt and emerging with a deeper respect for the craftsmen/women of the time who worked without a wheel. I did manage to preserve a shred of self dignity by making instead a small clay plaque with various inscribed rune rows that I plan to subtly paint and then display in our bedroom soon. :-)

I enjoyed seeing it was found through work on the Viking Link (or maybe Angle Link now) project as well, certainly fitting. Very interesting urn, I wish you greater luck on any subsequent attempts! I just wish the earlier people at the site weren't quite so enthusiastic about cremation.

As you mention Gretzinger in the title: The question is also if he will continue on anglo-saxons or if this chapter is closed for him now and he will shift more to investigate like Laura Lacher the Rhine Frankish area or if he will be involved in the project Microscope on Celts https://www.eva.mpg.de/archaeogenetics/p...icroscope/. I remember that he hold a short presentation about South German Celts a year ago.

At least we know that the remains of the Lowbury Hill man and woman went to MPI in Jena, the results are not published yet. No news since March.

https://www.reading.ac.uk/news/2023/Rese...ading-team

Not sure if this is related in any way but a placeholder for a Francis Crick institute appeared at ENA around beginning of October. They don't usually have these.

https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/view/PRJEB61709

This is actually quite a good article in its own way, although I'm dismayed that anyone attempting to assess whether the Anglo-Saxon mass migration into England really happened would ignore (or probably just miss in this case) the aDNA evidence.

So many of us here spent years having to groan through reading obviously mistaken conclusions from specialists misinterpreting the archaelogical and literary evidence until Gretzinger in particular finally settled the question with findings including this:

"In contrast to these previous periods, the majority of the early medieval individuals from England in our sample derive either all or a large fraction of their ancestry from continental northern Europe, with CNE ancestry of 76 ± 2% on average."

I look forward to subsequent papers because I'm sure the picture will vary significantly from village to village and period to period (as Gretzinger has already shown us to some extent) but I hope, no doubt in vain, that this is the last piece I ever read asking whether the Anglo-Saxon "invasion" ever happened.

Maybe of interest for those understanding German. A presentation of Stephan Schiffels "one year after". Nothing new, but interesting how he comments on the reactions he got on this publication.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5naPIzNjFI

(11-29-2023, 07:56 PM)Orentil Wrote: [ -> ]Maybe of interest for those understanding German. A presentation of Stephan Schiffels "one year after". Nothing new, but interesting how he comments on the reactions he got on this publication.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5naPIzNjFI

Thanks Orentil. Yet again, I almost lost the will to live hearing about what rightwing extremists had made of that groundbreaking paper as well as the reactions of their opponents.

I liked this map from Schiffels' presentation. Unless my memory is even worse than I fear, it wasn't in the paper:

^^Interesting - that puts Hartlepool into the Angle/Bernicia or Angle/North Deira zone. However the sample seems late enough that it may not be a reliable hint for his ancestry.
From FTDNA Discover:

Quote:Hartlepool 17277 was a man who lived between 600 - 900 CE during the Medieval Age and was found in the region now known as Hartlepool, Olive Street, Durham, England.
He was associated with the Medieval Britain cultural group.
His direct maternal line belonged to mtDNA haplogroup K2a6.
Reference: I17277 from Gretzinger et al. 2022

Sheepslayer/Schnurkeramik and FTDNA disagree on which "son" of Z17112 he is:
Sheep/Schnur:
P312>DF19>DF88>FGC11833>S4281>S4268>Z17112>Z21380>BY42641>Z41639>S18811
FTDNA:
P312>DF19>DF88>FGC11833>S4281>S4268>Z17112>S17075>S10067 [note: this is the same terminal SNP that caused MyAncestry to call a Colonial Calvert/Lord Baltimore sample DF19 when it later turned out to be L21, so I treat it with a little caution, and am biased to Z21380 despite FTDNA's usual reputation for conservative calls]

Rendlesham: Royal Anglo-Saxon complex is 'unique in England'


"The discovery of a 1,400-year-old "possible temple" near Sutton Hoo is the latest in a series of archaeological finds that has revealed the scale and wealth of an Anglo-Saxon settlement. Historians have long-been intrigued by a reference by the 8th Century monk-chronicler Bede to the royal complex at Rendlesham, Suffolk. After more than a decade of surveys and excavations, the site has exceeded their expectations. So, what has been revealed so far?" 

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-suffolk-67556575

I wonder if they'll find any burials around, although they probably wouldn't have fared any better than Raedwald with the acidic soils unfortunately.

I was looking back at this unusually interesting 2023 discovery today, which if memory serves we noted on AG back in March: a cemetery has been found in West Yorkshire that I hope will merit a place in the next big Anglo-Saxon aDNA study.

What's so special about this cemetery is that it was situated in the Celtic British kingdom of Elmet, in a part of West Yorkshire where no other early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries have been discovered. Moreover, the site features about 60 inhumation graves, spanning both the Roman and Anglo-Saxon periods.

Here's the key quote from the link above:

“The presence of two communities using the same burial site is highly unusual and whether their use of this graveyard overlapped or not will determine just how significant the find is.”

These Germanic (or partly Germanic) people will have been on the extreme western frontier of the early (pre full-on Christian period) English settlements in that region. Beyond them were still undisturbed Britons at that time. 

This section of the old Ordnance Survey map of Anglo-Saxon England illustrates that fact very clearly. The newly discovered cemetery at Garforth is very slightly to the northwest of Ledsham towards the top of this map (you'll see a grand total of three inhumation graves in the general area).



Immediately to the south of that you'll see the Peak District cluster of barrow burials, which really are Anglo-Saxon outliers in that area of British holdouts. I've done a lot of reading on those while researching the possibilities for my Y line. The Peak District has an Eccles place-name, suggesting the survival of a Celtic Christian site, but also has two pagan period place-names, (Wensley named after Woden/Odin) and Friden (which appears as Frigedene in an early charter, making it the valley of the goddess Frig).

Hair and a few teeth are pretty much all that has survived from the Peak District barrows. Sadly I doubt whether anyone will ever bother to test those teeth, but if skeletal preservation is good at the Garforth site, I'd love to find out more about that pioneering community of settlers through isotopes and aDNA.

(12-03-2023, 05:04 PM)NewEnglander Wrote: [ -> ]Rendlesham: Royal Anglo-Saxon complex is 'unique in England'


"The discovery of a 1,400-year-old "possible temple" near Sutton Hoo is the latest in a series of archaeological finds that has revealed the scale and wealth of an Anglo-Saxon settlement. Historians have long-been intrigued by a reference by the 8th Century monk-chronicler Bede to the royal complex at Rendlesham, Suffolk. After more than a decade of surveys and excavations, the site has exceeded their expectations. So, what has been revealed so far?" 

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-suffolk-67556575

I wonder if they'll find any burials around, although they probably wouldn't have fared any better than Raedwald with the acidic soils unfortunately.

I was very interested to read this latest article and thanks for posting it NewEnglander. I hope we get a lot more updates to post about that site in future. For anyone interested in Rendlesham who may have missed it, we discussed the site briefly a week or two back when Orentil posted news of the temple discovery.