Abstract
In the fourth millennium BCE a cultural phenomenon of monumental burial structures spread along the Atlantic façade. Megalithic burials have been targeted for aDNA analyses, but a gap remains in East Anglia, where Neolithic structures were generally earthen or timber. An early Neolithic (3762–3648 cal. BCE) burial monument at the site of Trumpington Meadows, Cambridgeshire, UK, contained the partially articulated remains of at least three individuals. To determine whether this monument fits a pattern present in megalithic burials regarding sex bias, kinship, diet and relationship to modern populations, teeth and ribs were analysed for DNA and carbon and nitrogen isotopic values, respectively. Whole ancient genomes were sequenced from two individuals to a mean genomic coverage of 1.6 and 1.2X and genotypes imputed. Results show that they were brothers from a small population genetically and isotopically similar to previously published British Neolithic individuals, with a level of genome-wide homozygosity consistent with a small island population sourced from continental Europe, but bearing no signs of recent inbreeding. The first Neolithic whole genomes from a monumental burial in East Anglia confirm that this region was connected with the larger pattern of Neolithic megaliths in the British Isles and the Atlantic façade.
Highlights
Recent archaeogenomic research has mainly focused on the broad genetic affinities of British Mesolithic (n=6), Neolithic (n=83) and Bronze Age (n=67) people and population turnover coinciding with material culture change (Olalde et al 2018; Brace et al 2019) with one focusing on the connections within and between megalithic burials along the Atlantic façade (Sanchez-Quinto et al 2019)
Sk.4/799 and Sk.1/880 are identical by descent (IBD) for one haplotype across 48% of their genome and share IBD for both haplotypes across 33.7% of the genome which is consistent with a full sibling relationship (Table S7)
Haploid genotype calls at 1,233,013 SNPs of the ‘1240 capture’ array (Mathieson et al 2015) were made in ANGSD (Korneliussen et al 2014) for both Trumpington individuals (TRM10) and merged with previously published Neolithic British samples and modern t European genomes from the Human Origins dataset, obtaining rip ~500k overlapping autosomal SNPs for principal component analysis (PCA)
Summary
Ruoyun Hui, Eugenia D’Atanasio, Anthony Wilder Wohns, Sarah A. Accepted author version posted online: 11 Jun 2019.
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