Bell Beaker pottery spread across western and central Europe beginning around 2750 BCE before disappearing between 2200–1800 BCE. The mechanism of its expansion is a topic of long-standing debate, with support for both cultural diffusion and human migration. We present new genome-wide ancient DNA data from 170 Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age Europeans, including 100 Beaker-associated individuals. In contrast to the Corded Ware Complex, which has previously been identified as arriving in central Europe following migration from the east, we observe limited genetic affinity between Iberian and central European Beaker Complex-associated individuals, and thus exclude migration as a significant mechanism of spread between these two regions. However, human migration did have an important role in the further dissemination of the Beaker Complex, which we document most clearly in Britain using data from 80 newly reported individuals dating to 3900–1200 BCE. British Neolithic farmers were genetically similar to contemporary populations in continental Europe and in particular to Neolithic Iberians, suggesting that a portion of the farmer ancestry in Britain came from the Mediterranean rather than the Danubian route of farming expansion. Beginning with the Beaker period, and continuing through the Bronze Age, all British individuals harboured high proportions of Steppe ancestry and were genetically closely related to Beaker-associated individuals from the Lower Rhine area. We use these observations to show that the spread of the Beaker Complex to Britain was mediated by migration from the continent that replaced >90% of Britain’s Neolithic gene pool within a few hundred years, continuing the process that brought Steppe ancestry into central and northern Europe 400 years earlier.

Bell Beaker pottery spread across western and central Europe beginning around 2750 BCE before disappearing between 2200–1800 BCE. The forces propelling its expansion are a matter of long-standing debate, with support for both cultural diffusion and migration. We present new genome-wide data from 400 Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age Europeans, including 226 Beaker-associated individuals. We detected limited genetic affinity between Iberian and central European Beaker-associated individuals, and thus exclude migration as a significant mechanism of spread between these two regions. However, migration played a key role in the further dissemination of the Beaker Complex, a phenomenon we document most clearly in Britain, where the spread of the Beaker Complex introduced high levels of Steppe-related ancestry and was associated with a replacement of ~90% of Britain’s gene pool within a few hundred years, continuing the east-to-west expansion that had brought Steppe-related ancestry into central and northern Europe 400 years earlier.

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1038/nature25738.

Dans les sédiments du lac d'Anterne (Haute-Savoie), la période romaine est caractérisée par une contamination au plomb, plus importante que celle liée à l'utilisation d'essences plombées dans les années 1970. Le maximum de contamination, daté par comptage de varves, intervient en 220 après J.-C., à l'apogée de la civilisation romaine dans les Alpes. Le recoupement avec des preuves archéologiques souligne l'importance économique de la ville de Passy pour la cité de Vienne et donne un nouvel exemple de contamination due à une activité métallurgique régionale, plutôt que liée à l'exploitation de la mine espagnole de Rio Tinto.

Located on the banks of the Rhone, downstream from Lake Leman, the edifice of Seyssel-Albigny followed a small necropolis dating from the Low Empire implanted in the ruins of a Gallo-Roman urban center. The plan of the building is inscribed in a rectangle ; it includes a central nave opening to a flat chevet to the east and to annexes to the west, north and south. A campaign to consolidate the edifice appreciably modified the plan in the north without, however, affecting the major part of the building. Coffered flatstone tombs are found in the basement of the nave and the chevet. Outside, a cemetery spreading out to the south and east of the edifice received mostly tombs dug directly in the ground or in wooden coffers. Anthropological analysis has showed that the typological and spatial distribution of the tombs is to be related to the distribution of the dead according to the criterion of age of death, sex and probably also of social status.