Abstract
The Iron Age was a dynamic period in central Mediterranean history, with the expansion of Greek and Phoenician colonies and the growth of Carthage into the dominant maritime power of the Mediterranean. These events were facilitated by the ease of long-distance travel following major advances in seafaring. We know from the archaeological record that trade goods and materials were moving across great distances in unprecedented quantities, but it is unclear how these patterns correlate with human mobility. Here, to investigate population mobility and interactions directly, we sequenced the genomes of 30 ancient individuals from coastal cities around the central Mediterranean, in Tunisia, Sardinia and central Italy. We observe a meaningful contribution of autochthonous populations, as well as highly heterogeneous ancestry including many individuals with non-local ancestries from other parts of the Mediterranean region. These results highlight both the role of local populations and the extreme interconnectedness of populations in the Iron Age Mediterranean. By studying these trans-Mediterranean neighbours together, we explore the complex interplay between local continuity and mobility that shaped the Iron Age societies of the central Mediterranean.
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Data availability
All tools and data needed to reproduce and evaluate the conclusions in this paper are presented in the main text and the Supplementary Information. Alignment files for the DNA sequences for all newly reported individual genomes are available at the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) database under project accession number PRJEB49419.
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Acknowledgements
This project was partially supported by the Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship (H.M.M.) and grants from the Stanford Archaeology Centre (H.M.M.), the Europe Center Austria Exchange Program (H.M.M.) and the Stanford Anthropology Department (H.M.M.), a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (M.A.), the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) M3108-G (S.S.), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (J.K.P.), a grant from the National Institutes of Health RO1 HG011432 (C.L.W.), the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (A.C., M.L., F.C., F.L.P., F.G.), the Istituto Per l’Oriente CA Nallino (A.C., M.L., F.C., F.L.P., F.G.), and a Ministro dell’Istruzione, Università e Ricerca (MIUR) project grant via the International Association for the Mediterranean and Oriental Studies (A.C., M.L., F.C., F.L.P., F.G.). We thank all members of the Pritchard and Pinhasi labs for their thoughtful and valuable feedback; P. W. Faber and the University of Chicago Genomics Facility for providing sequencing services for the ancient genomes reported here.
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R.P., J.K.P, A.C. and M.F. designed research; R.P., S.S., V.O., E.P., O.C., K.T.O., L.D., H.M.M. and D.F. performed and supervised laboratory work; A.C. and M.F. designed the collection strategy for archaeological material; M.F., A.C., M.L., F.L.P., F.G., F.C., D.D.A., G.G., H.M.M., Y.M.S.C. and S.A. assembled skeletal material and provided archaeological background; H.M.M., M.A., S.S., J.P.S., V.O., C.L.W., E.P., B.Z. and Z.G. curated and analysed data with input from J.K.P., R.P., A.C., D.F. and Y.M.S.C.; H.M.M., J.K.P., R.P., J.P.S., M.A., S.S., C.L.W., Y.M.S.C. and Z.G. wrote the paper with input from all collaborators.
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Supplementary Information
Supplementary Figs. 1–15, Discussion/Text, Table 1, and captions for Datasets 1–5.
Supplementary Data 1
Newly reported ancient individuals.
Supplementary Data 2
Ancient individual genomes used in analyses.
Supplementary Data 3
AMS dating and isotope analysis results.
Supplementary Data 4
Admixture and cladistic analysis using qpAdm and qpWave.
Supplementary Data 5
Admixture analysis using qpAdm, including Levantine source populations.
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Moots, H.M., Antonio, M., Sawyer, S. et al. A genetic history of continuity and mobility in the Iron Age central Mediterranean. Nat Ecol Evol 7, 1515–1524 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02143-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02143-4