ARCHAEOGENETICS AND PALAEOGENETICS OF THE BRITISH ISLES

Although it is well known that different waves of migration have shaped the population of the British Isles through time, little is known about these population movements over the past 12,000 years. This time period includes there colonisation of the British Isles by the first hunter-gatherers, and the subsequent arrival of the Neolithic peoples, to the Roman conquest and Anglo-Saxon and Viking migrations, all of which have shaped the genetic diversity of the modern population. However, although these population movements are seen in the archaeological and historical record, it is mostly unknown to what extent different populations arrived into Britain, or from where exactly they originated. The timing and scale of these events are as unknown as what became of the indigenous populations. The recent advance of high-throughput DNA sequencing, especially in the field of ancient DNA, together with the increased number of genome-wide sequencing data of ancient humans from various regions and eras, makes larger scale studies of specific ancient populations, such as those of the British Isles, possible. These new techniques now make it feasible to generate considerable amounts of data from large sample sizes of archaeological human remains, allowing questions to be addressed at population level. The use of uniparental markers (mtDNA and Y-chromosome) at high resolution can show a fine-scale picture of the genetic diversity and origin of ancient and modern-day populations of the British Isles, and add to the information gained through genome-wide sequencing. My project highlights population turnover during the Neolithic to Bronze Age transition, in the Scottish Isles, identifies possible Near Eastern/North African ancestry in a Bell Beaker individual from northeastern England, answers questions about the kin relationship between individuals in an Iron Age cave burial in Scotland and within cemeteries from the Bronze Age, Iron Age and the post-Roman era, and shows the differences in mito-chondrial and Y-chromosome haplogroup frequencies across different time periods to the modern-day British population. The provided time-resolved data has allowed analysis of distinct migrations to the British Isles and the genetic composition of its populations throughout different time periods.