A major bioarcheological study of ancient teeth revealed groundbreaking information about early medieval migrants that will change the history books.
Researchers at the Universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge conducted the first large-scale analysis of isotopic and ancient DNA data in cemeteries from early medieval England to assess their migration patterns, according to a press release by the University of Edinburgh.
Ancient tooth enamel revealed that early medieval migrants came to England through the Mediterranean and from the Arctic Circle and beyond, according to a new study published in Medieval Archaeology.
Those specifics aside, more stunningly, researchers discovered that these brave, early explorers of new worlds demonstrated a different way of moving than had been previously understood.
The major study debunked what could now be called the myth that migration occurred in intense spurts over time, with “a significant spike,” according to the press release, in the 7th and 8th centuries. The team found that it happened as a continuous flow.
Their teeth even possessed a snapshot of periods of climate change.
Medieval Europeans moved to England consistently
A press release by the University of Cambridge continued that researchers studied more than 700 chemical signatures from the teeth of people buried in England between AD 400 and 1100.
They then cross-examined the data with ancient DNA from 316 individuals to compare movement patterns with ancestry, as stated in the press release.
By zeroing in on their tooth enamel, researchers were able to crack open their eating habits and how they differed from local customs, allowing them to begin to assemble a picture of these migrants.
They gathered the main sources that documented their movements, such as Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, to determine how their data lined up with these records.
“The study took a ‘big data’ approach to assess the narratives around early medieval migration. We see here that migration was a consistent feature rather than just tied to one-off events, with evidence of communities in continual cross-cultural contact, tied into large-scale networks which may have contributed to the major socio-cultural changes we see throughout the period,” Dr. Sam Leggett from the School of History, Classics and Archaeology stated in a press release.
Medieval migration did not happen in spurts
They found migration didn’t “start and stop,” but rather continued over time with a dominant demographic of males. Although women from North East, Kent, and Wessex appeared to want to leave their hometowns for a new world, specifically.
Furthermore, they saw significant movement from Wales, Ireland, Northwest Europe, and the Mediterranean.
The study made a significant contribution, if not clarification, to this academic niche — medieval migration wasn’t seasonal, nor sporadic and intense. The teeth also captured climate shifts such as the Late Antique Little Ice Age and the Medieval Climate Anomaly, which might have encouraged some increase in migration into England.
Lastly, as Archaeology News reported, Britain was never isolated from the rest of the continent, and it was connected to distant regions, too. It turns out that Europe had strong ties with England, and that Europeans flowed into the country more consistently than researchers previously understood.