Two independent studies published in Antiquity traced England’s overseas contacts to the early medieval period by identifying West African ancestry in two seventh-century burials.
Researchers analyzed 24 genomes from cemeteries at Updown in Kent and Worth Matravers in Dorset. Twenty-two matched the northern European or western British and Irish profiles expected for the era. The outliers were an early-adolescent girl in grave 47 at Updown and a young man at Worth Matravers; both carried an estimated 20–40 percent ancestry most closely aligned with present-day Yoruba, Mende, Mandenka, and Esan populations.
Further examination indicated that each individual had a West African paternal grandparent. Mitochondrial DNA was wholly northern European, showing that their mothers—or maternal grandmothers—were local. “Both individuals thus show genetically and geographically mixed descent,” said Professor Duncan Sayer of the University of Central Lancashire, lead author of the Updown study. Despite their distinct heritage, the teenagers were buried with the same rites as their neighbors.
Updown lay within the early Anglo-Saxon cultural heartland, an area strongly linked to the continent. “Kent has always been a conduit for influence from the adjacent continent, and this was particularly marked in the sixth century,” said Sayer. The girl’s grave contained a knife, a bone comb, a decorated pot likely imported from Frankish Gaul, and a spoon that may point to Christian practice or Byzantine contacts.
Worth Matravers sat just beyond Anglo-Saxon control and held an austere Christian cemetery where grave goods were rare. The young man was buried with a limestone anchor and placed beside an older, unrelated male of wholly British ancestry, a pairing that Dr. Ceiridwen J. Edwards of the University of Huddersfield suggested could echo an apprentice-and-master relationship.
The ancestry points to arrivals between the mid-sixth and early seventh centuries, soon after Emperor Justinian reconquered North Africa in 533–535 CE. “It is the reconquest in the middle sixth century which seems to be the event here,” said Sayer, arguing that renewed Mediterranean trade likely carried merchants or pilgrims northward. The authors noted that large-scale trafficking of Black African slaves into Europe did not begin until the ninth and tenth centuries, making commerce a more plausible route for the gene flow.
“Our joint results emphasize the cosmopolitan nature of England in the early medieval period,” said Edwards. Lilian Ladle, director of the Worth Matravers excavation, added, “This study has greatly enhanced our interpretation of the archaeological results by revealing not only fascinating family dynamics, but also exciting long-distance links between groups and individuals.” The teams concluded that archaeogenetics now allows scholars to detect individual migrants and refine debates on early medieval mobility.
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