Mitochondrial ancestry of medieval individuals carelessly interred in a multiple burial from southeastern Romania

Abstract

The historical province of Dobruja, located in southeastern Romania, has experienced intense human population movement, invasions, and conflictual episodes during the Middle Ages, being an important intersection point between Asia and Europe. The most informative source of maternal population histories is the complete mitochondrial genome of archaeological specimens, but currently, there is insufficient ancient DNA data available for the medieval period in this geographical region to complement the archaeological findings. In this study, we reconstructed, by using Next Generation Sequencing, the entire mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) of six medieval individuals neglectfully buried in a multiple burial from Capidava necropolis (Dobruja), some presenting signs of a violent death. Six distinct maternal lineages (H11a1, U4d2, J1c15, U6a1a1, T2b, and N1a3a) with different phylogenetic background were identified, pointing out the heterogeneous genetic aspect of the analyzed medieval group. Using population genetic analysis based on high-resolution mitochondrial data, we inferred the genetic affinities of the available medieval dataset from Capidava to other ancient Eurasian populations. The genetic data were integrated with the archaeological and anthropological information in order to sketch a small, local piece of the mosaic that is the image of medieval European population history.

Analysis of mitochondrial DNA haplogroup frequencies in the population of the slab burial mortuary culture of Mongolia (ca. 1100–300 BCE)

“…The J1 hg has been linked to early Neolithic Middle Eastern agriculturalist expansion into Europe (Haak et al, 2010) and, while it is rare in East Asia, it appears in small numbers throughout central Eurasian steppe populations, which suggests a possible earlier presence (Isern et al, 2017). J1c haplotypes have been found regularly in ancient Carpathian and Pontic‐Caspian populations (Derenko et al, 2019; Juras et al, 2018; Malyarchuk et al, 2018; Modi et al, 2019; Rusu et al, 2019). Sample AT179 was a (100% quality) match for the basal K haplotype (SNPs at np16224 and 16311).…”

Mitochondrial DNA Profiles of Individuals from a 12th Century Necropolis in Feldioara (Transylvania)

“…The resulting datasets, one consisting of 21 historical populations (including the population considered in this study) and one, including 35 modern Eurasian populations, were used for haplogroup-based analysis, as well as for sequence-based analysis as detailed below. The population from Feldioara were compared to an ancient dataset consisting of 747 sequences of European populations and a Byzantine group [ 27 ]: Lombards from Italy [ 28 , 29 ] and Hungary [ 29 ], Avars [ 30 , 31 , 32 ], Vikings from Norway [ 33 ] and Denmark [ 34 ], medieval Basques [ 35 ], Italians [ 36 ], Bulgarians [ 37 ], medieval population of Conquest period from Hungary [ 30 , 38 ], medieval populations from Poland [ 39 ], Slovakia [ 40 ], Iceland [ 41 ], southeastern Romania [ 20 , 42 ] and Bavaria [ 43 ]. In addition to these medieval groups, an Iron Age population attributed to Goths [ 44 ] and a population from Italy dated to the Roman period [ 45 ] were used in comparative analyses.…”

“…This lineage and few derivatives were identified in ancient specimens such as: Iron Age Tagar individuals from Southern Siberia [55], Bronze Age representatives from the Baikal Lake region [56], as well as Bronze Age Kurgan speci- Figure 1. Geographic and genetic relationships between two medieval populations from the current territory of Romania: the population from Feldioara (labeled in red), located in the historical region of Transylvania, was investigated in this study, while the population from Capidava (labeled in grey, and labeled as seROU_med in further graphs and text), located in the province of Dobruja, was analyzed in previous studies [20,42]. Pie charts represent the frequencies of the major haplogroups in these populations.…”

Exchanging genes and goods: How ancient DNA can potentially illuminate complex mobility patterns in the Black Sea region

“…17 Mathieson et al 2018. 18 Rusu et al 2018Rusu et al 2019;Gînguță et al 2021. population dynamics of this region. For instance, generating aDNA for the Babadag culture could provide insights into the genetic origins of this enigmatic group, which is currently poorly understood.…”