Low Genetic Impact of the Roman Occupation of Britain in Rural Communities.

ABSTRACT: The Roman period saw the empire expand across Europe and the Mediterranean, including much of what is today Great Britain. While there is written evidence of high mobility into and out of Britain for administrators, traders, and the military, the impact of imperialism on local, rural population structure, kinship, and mobility is invisible in the textual record. The extent of genetic change that occurred in Britain during the Roman military occupation remains underexplored. Here, using genome-wide data from 52 ancient individuals from eight sites in Cambridgeshire covering the period of Roman occupation, we show low levels of genetic ancestry differentiation between Romano-British sites and indications of larger populations than in the Bronze Age and Neolithic. We find no evidence of long-

SUBMITTER: Scheib CL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11393495 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature