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The ‘People of the British Isles’ project and Viking settlement in England
- Source :
- Antiquity. 90:1670-1680
- Publication Year :
- 2016
- Publisher :
- Antiquity Publications, 2016.
-
Abstract
- The recently concluded ‘People of the British Isles’ project (hereafter PoBI) combined large-scale, local DNA sampling with innovative data analysis to generate a survey of the genetic structure of Britain in unprecedented detail; the results were presented by Leslie and colleagues in 2015. Comparing clusters of genetic variation within Britain with DNA samples from Continental Europe, the study elucidated past immigration events via the identification and dating of historic admixture episodes (the interbreeding of two or more different population groups). Among its results, the study found “no clear genetic evidence of the Danish Viking occupation and control of a large part of England, either in separate UK clusters in that region, or in estimated ancestry profiles”, therefore positing “a relatively limited input of DNA from the Danish Vikings”, with ‘Danish Vikings’ defined in the study, and thus in this article, as peoples migrating from Denmark to eastern England in the late ninth and early tenth centuries (Leslieet al.2015: 313). Here, we consider the details of certain assumptions that were made in the study, and offer an alternative interpretation to the above conclusion. We also comment on the substantial archaeological and linguistic evidence for a large-scale Danish Viking presence in England.
- Subjects :
- 0301 basic medicine
Ninth
Archeology
education.field_of_study
History
060102 archaeology
General Arts and Humanities
media_common.quotation_subject
Linguistic evidence
Immigration
Population
06 humanities and the arts
language.human_language
Genealogy
Danish
03 medical and health sciences
030104 developmental biology
Genetic structure
language
0601 history and archaeology
Settlement (litigation)
education
media_common
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 17451744 and 0003598X
- Volume :
- 90
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Antiquity
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....bbbc5cabc5ff4fe610e0953aafc4eb7f