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. 2019 Jan 30;9(1):961.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-37760-8.

Mitochondrial ancestry of medieval individuals carelessly interred in a multiple burial from southeastern Romania

Ioana Rusu  1   2 , Alessandra Modi  3 , Claudia Radu  4   5 , Cristina Mircea  4   6 , Adriana Vulpoi  7 , Cătălin Dobrinescu  8 , Vitalie Bodolică  8 , Tiberiu Potârniche  8 , Octavian Popescu  4   6   9 , David Caramelli  10 , Beatrice Kelemen  4   6
Affiliations

Mitochondrial ancestry of medieval individuals carelessly interred in a multiple burial from southeastern Romania

Ioana Rusu et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

The historical province of Dobruja, located in southeastern Romania, has experienced intense human population movement, invasions, and conflictual episodes during the Middle Ages, being an important intersection point between Asia and Europe. The most informative source of maternal population histories is the complete mitochondrial genome of archaeological specimens, but currently, there is insufficient ancient DNA data available for the medieval period in this geographical region to complement the archaeological findings. In this study, we reconstructed, by using Next Generation Sequencing, the entire mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) of six medieval individuals neglectfully buried in a multiple burial from Capidava necropolis (Dobruja), some presenting signs of a violent death. Six distinct maternal lineages (H11a1, U4d2, J1c15, U6a1a1, T2b, and N1a3a) with different phylogenetic background were identified, pointing out the heterogeneous genetic aspect of the analyzed medieval group. Using population genetic analysis based on high-resolution mitochondrial data, we inferred the genetic affinities of the available medieval dataset from Capidava to other ancient Eurasian populations. The genetic data were integrated with the archaeological and anthropological information in order to sketch a small, local piece of the mosaic that is the image of medieval European population history.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Median joining network for haplogroup H11a1 obtained from complete mtDNA genomes.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Median joining network for haplogroup U4d2 obtained from complete mtDNA genomes.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Median joining network for haplogroup J1c15 obtained from complete mtDNA genomes.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Median joining network for haplogroup T2b obtained from complete mtDNA genomes.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Median joining network for haplogroup N1a3a obtained from complete mtDNA genomes.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Median joining network for haplogroup U6a1a1 obtained from complete mtDNA genomes.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Heatmap of FST and geographic distribution. Smaller pairwise FST values indicating less genetic distances are marked by blue shades. Exact FST values and population information are listed in Supplementary Table S6. The map was created using QGIS 2.18.11 (QGIS Development Team, 2016. QGIS Geographic Information System. Open Source Geospatial Foundation. http://qgis.osgeo.org).
Figure 8
Figure 8
MDS plot based on linearized Slatkin FST values calculated from complete mtDNA genomes. Stress value is 0.142. Detailed description of each individual from each population used in comparison is given in the Supplementary Table S5, while the linearized Slatkin FST values are listed in the Supplementary Table S6.
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