Multi-scale archaeogenetic study of two French Iron Age communities: From internal social- to broad-scale population dynamics

Abstract

Highlights:• Multidisciplinary study of Late Iron age groups from Northern France • Population-scale DNA-based approach permitted the documentation of communities' internal social dynamics • Gallic groups were characterised by patrilocal residence and patrilinearity rules • Distinct necropolis welcomed distinct biological and social groups

Origin and mobility of Iron Age Gaulish groups in present-day France revealed through archaeogenomics

“…It is finally worth adding that the three individuals from Urville-Nacqueville that provided genomic data are three males, all buried in the so-called “Durotrigian” position, which is well known in Dorset ( Fitzpatrick, 2011 ; Lefort et al., 2015 ). Consequently, we cannot exclude that these individuals might originate from southern England and may not be representative of the whole population buried at Urville-Nacqueville ( Fischer et al., 2018 , 2019 ). Regardless of the case, the correlation between exogenous material, cultural variations, and gene flow with groups from other regions found in these specific contexts cannot be extended to the full IA archaeological landscape.…”

“…(2020) permits to confirm the prominence of haplogroups H (25,58%), J (20,93%), K and U (both at 15,12%) among French IA groups. Large chronological groups, from the Palaeolithic to the Bronze Age period, were constituted to figure out the diachronic evolution of maternal lineages frequencies on the French territory by combining our dataset with previous published data ( Brunel et al., 2020 ; Fischer et al., 2018 , 2019 ; Fu et al., 2016 ; Olalde et al., 2018 ; Rivollat et al., 2020 , Figure S2 ).…”

“…In that respect, the French territory remained neglected in palaeogenomic studies in Europe until the very recent publication of three studies targeting this key crossroad region in Western Europe ( Brunel et al., 2020 ; Rivollat et al., 2020 ; Seguin-Orlando et al., 2021 ). Nevertheless, genetic and genomic data for IA period from French territory remain scarce, with mitochondrial data for 91 individuals and low-coverage genomes for 19 individuals ( Fischer et al., 2018 , 2019 ; Brunel et al., 2020 ). To date, the underrepresentation of IA populations in palaeogenomic studies, compared with prior periods, can be extended to the European scale, with a total of 44 mitochondrial sequences from Germany, Spain and Italy ( Knipper et al., 2014 ; Núñez et al., 2016 ; Serventi et al., 2018 ) and a total of 27 genomic data points from England ( Martiniano et al., 2016 ; Schiffels et al., 2016 ), Bulgaria ( Mathieson et al., 2018 ), Croatia ( Mathieson et al., 2018 ), Spain ( Olalde et al., 2019 ), Hungary ( Gamba et al., 2014 ), Montenegro ( Allentoft et al., 2015 ), Estonia ( Saag et al., 2019 ) and Germany ( Furtwängler et al., 2020 ).…”