Papers Ancient DNA and matrilineal kinship in Iron Age Britain The Arras world: square barrows, chalk hills, and striking funerals In Iron Age Britain, one burial tradition stands out with unusual clarity: the cemeteries of East Yorkshire, spread across the Yorkshire Wolds. Here, the dead were laid beneath square barrows, small ditched monuments that from the air appear like geometric By Sven • 8 min read
Papers Medieval Paleogenomics in Northern Latium Medieval Northern Latium: Coast, Hills, and New Towns North of Rome, medieval Latium offered three strikingly different communities: Santa Severa on the Tyrrhenian coast, Allumiere-La Bianca in the mineral-rich Tolfa Mountains, and Leopoli-Cencelle, a planned papal town. Together they reveal a medieval society that was busy, adaptive, and deeply connected. By Caterina • 1 min read
Papers Genomic evidence for female exogamy in a Tang Dynasty clan The Naobaowan Cemetery on the Tang Frontier On the southern bank of the Yellow River, near the Kubuqi Desert in Inner Mongolia, the Naobaowan cemetery is not simply a cluster of old graves. It is a family landscape frozen in brick, dust, and memory. The dead belonged to an elite By Sven • 4 min read
Papers Ancient DNA and Migrations in the Northern Black Sea Region Frontier of Empires and Riders: The Northern Black Sea as a Living Crossroads The Northern Black Sea region in the first millennium CE was where history never sat still. Sea met steppe, Greek-speaking town met horse-borne nomad, and every generation inherited a landscape layered with ruins, graves, old loyalties, and By Caterina • 6 min read
Papers Ancient DNA Reveals Mixed Origins of Gothic Communities in Late Antique Bulgaria Frontier Cemeteries on the Black Sea and the Danubian Plain Late antique Bulgaria offers two vivid windows into a world often flattened under a single label: "the Goths." Two burial sites linked with Gothic-associated customs stand at the centre of this landscape. One lies at Aquae Calidae near By Sven • 4 min read
Papers Paleogenetics of Princess Maria Shvarnovna, wife of Grand Prince Vsevolod the Big Nest Princess in the Monastery: The Burial at Vladimir In medieval Vladimir, the Knyaginin Monastery served as both a religious house and a dynastic resting place for the women of Rus' ruling families. Within its cathedral, beneath layers of centuries of rebuilding, lay remains that brought a forgotten princess vividly By Sara V • 4 min read
Papers Integer Partitions Reveal Super-Archaic Gene Flow in Human Ancestry Hidden ancestors in the human story Long before farming or cities, there were meetings between different kinds of people—preserved not in words, but in human ancestry. Modern humans did not emerge from a neat, isolated line. Their story includes contact with a deeply ancient population so old that no By Caterina • 5 min read
Papers Ancient Leprosy Genomes and the Origins of Branch 0 Ancient Leprosy Emerges from the East For a long time, the story of ancient leprosy seemed written mainly in Europe. Medieval cemeteries and hospital burial grounds gave scholars a dramatic archive of suffering and exclusion. But that picture was incomplete. Vast eastern lands had yielded almost no ancient genetic evidence By Caterina • 4 min read
Papers Regional adaptation to Neolithic farming in ancient Western Eurasian genomes The Iron Gates: Where Farmers Met Hunter-Gatherers Along the Danube's great gorge, prehistoric Europe produced one of its most extraordinary landscapes. Lepenski Vir, the region's best-known site, challenges old assumptions about hunter-gatherers as scattered nomads. Here stood communities with architecture, monuments, and elaborate burials suggesting deep By Sven • 5 min read
Papers Scottish Traveller Genetic Origins and Founder Disease Risk Scottish Travellers: A Distinct People with Deep Scottish Roots Who are the Scottish Travellers, and where do they come from? For generations, answers were shaped by myth and prejudice rather than evidence. What emerges from research is something far more grounded: Scottish Travellers have overwhelmingly Scottish ancestry, yet form a By Jamie L • 6 min read
Papers Neolithic DNA, Admixture, and Plague on Gotland Farmers and Foragers on an Island Frontier In the middle of the Baltic Sea, Gotland became one of the most intriguing stages of the Neolithic world. For more than five centuries, two very different ways of life existed side by side. One group were farmers linked to Funnel Beaker communities By Sven • 5 min read
Papers Post-Viking Early Christian DNA of Children in Scandinavia Children in the Christian Graveyard Children's bones are notoriously difficult to interpret—smaller, more fragile, and resistant to the methods that reveal sex, age, and status in adults. Yet without children, no picture of past society is complete. In early Christian Scandinavia, this challenge intensifies: the spread of By Sven • 4 min read
Papers DNA and Contamination Analysis of the Turin Shroud Samples A Famous Cloth Through Fire, Chapels, and Courts The Turin Shroud sits at the crossroads of faith, power, and disaster. It is a long linen cloth marked with the front and back image of a man bearing brutal wounds. For centuries it has drawn pilgrims, doubters, rulers, and scientists. What By Caterina • 6 min read
Papers Ancient DNA and Dynastic Rule among Iron Age Scythian Elites The Steppe World of the Scythian Age Across Eurasia's vast grasslands in the first millennium BC, a remarkable world stretched from the Altai Mountains to the Black Sea. Horse-riding communities moved with herds across this immense belt of steppe, yet it was no empty wilderness. It was crowded By Sara V • 5 min read
Papers 6,000 Years of Genomic History in the Middle Yellow River The first farmers of the middle Yellow River and the people of Xiaowu More than six thousand years ago, in the heartland of the Yangshao world along the middle Yellow River, some of the earliest farming communities in northern China took root. One key site was Xiaowu in western Henan, By Jamie L • 3 min read
Papers Sakhtysh: Forest Hunter-Gatherers and Europe’s Deep Genetic Past The Forest World of Sakhtysh In the deep woodland and wetland country near the Upper Volga, Sakhtysh opens a window onto a prehistoric landscape that was anything but empty. Rivers wound through the land like roads. Lakes and bogs offered fish, birds, and reeds. Forest tracks linked camps, hearths, and By Sven • 4 min read
Papers Medieval Sicily’s Multi-Faith Genetic History Sicily at the Crossroads of the Medieval Mediterranean Medieval Sicily was a hinge of the world. Set between Europe, North Africa, and the Near East, it drew Byzantine officials, Muslim governors, Norman kings, merchants, and travellers to its wheat fields, ports, and crowded markets. Yet political conquest never produced one By Caterina • 6 min read
Papers Ancient DNA and Genetic History of the Mongolian Steppe The Mongolian Steppe as a Great Human Crossroads The Mongolian steppe stretches like an inland sea of grass—vast, wind-cut, and deceptively open. For thousands of years it hummed with movement: herders driving animals across seasonal pasture, traders carrying goods, warriors crossing vast distances, communities meeting, mixing, or avoiding one By Caterina • 5 min read
Papers Ancient malaria DNA in the Medici family remains The Medici Dead and the Mystery of Fever Beneath Florence's dynastic grandeur, the remains of Grand Duke Francesco I and Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici were still telling stories. These weren't obscure figures—Francesco ruled Tuscany, Giovanni was his cardinal brother—yet what clung most tightly By Sven • 3 min read
Papers Faroese Genomes Reveal Ancestry and Selection The Islands and the Mystery of the First Settlers The Faroe Islands rise from the North Atlantic like steep, wind-cut giants, perched between Norway and Iceland. For centuries, people have asked who arrived first and what lives they made on these storm-battered islands. The answer is layered, and that is By Sven • 4 min read
Papers Athens Plague Likely Caused by Salmonella A City Under Siege and a Disease That Changed History In the summer heat of ancient Athens, while Spartan armies ravaged the countryside, another enemy moved silently inside the city walls. Thousands of rural refugees had flooded into a space never meant to hold them. The result was overcrowding, broken By Sara V • 3 min read
Papers Prehistoric Lethal Plague in Lake Baikal Hunter-Gatherers Lake Baikal and the World of Its Hunter-Gatherers On the western shores of Lake Baikal and along the Angara River, a remarkable prehistoric landscape emerges. Around 5,500 years ago, communities lived by skill and movement rather than farming, knowing river channels, fish runs and forest paths. Their cemeteries offer By Jamie L • 6 min read
Papers Ancient DNA, Diet and Mobility of Iron Age Umbrians at Spoleto Piazza d'Armi: A Window onto Early Umbrian Society High above the valleys of central Italy, the necropolis of Piazza d'Armi near Spoleto opens a remarkable window onto a wealthy, ambitious community connected to the wider world. Used between roughly 720 and 580 BC during the Orientalising By Caterina • 3 min read
