Ancient DNA

A number of Iron Age skeletons were found at Site F. This attracted the attention of an archaeologist working on an international project looking at Ancient DNA.

The project was run by Professor Ian Armit of the University of York and David Reich from the Harvard Medical School. The results of the project were published in Nature Magazine, with the title 

“Large-Scale Migration into Southern Britain During the Middle to Late Bronze Age”.

The remains of several Iron Age people from Site F in Thame were lent to the project, so that Ancient DNA could be extracted from them. This added one or two years to the overall post-excavation phase of Site F.

The paper revealed that in the British Iron Age, around 800BC to 43AD, there was no large-scale inward migration on anything like the scale of that in the Bronze Age, around 2,500 BC to 800 BC.

One reason this is significant relates to the spread of the so-called Celtic languages into Britain, hitherto a point of debate. 

It appears that the language spoken in England and Wales in the Iron Age, known as Brythonic, spread into Britian from the Continent in the Bronze Age.

The project did however find some ‘outliers’, groups of people whose DNA indicated recent entry into Britian from the Continent, possibly from Alpine France.

One such Outlier was Thame. The Iron Age remains sent to the project from Site F in Thame had DNA indicating a statistically significant proportion were recent arrivals from the continent.

Another Outlier was Winnall Down, near Winchester.

We can only speculate on how people moved around. It may be significant, or not, that there was a large Iron Age enclosure called an Oppidum at Dorchester on Thames, a defended enclosure with buildings and trackways inside thought to be a commercial or trading centre for a large area. Was it trade that brought people from the Continent to Dorchester and perhaps to Thame?

The links between Dorchester and Thame were strong in the Roman period, and lasted into Christian times. It is surely feasible they were strong in the Iron Age.