I'm away from all my stuff at the moment- key things to flag are differences between what DNA and Isotopes can tell you - former gives ancestry, latter location - the two are obviously very different things. 1/2
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Replying to @DavidPetts1 @salu1292 and
there has been very little Ancient DNA work done of any kind on early medieval British material - it's a really technique that addresses rather than individuals - the early med A DNA I know of is phttps://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10408opulations 2/3
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Replying to @DavidPetts1 @salu1292 and
There are various isotopic stuff that has picked up North Africans in early med contexts - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23737109/ - these could in theory Berber, Vandal, Roman, Arab 3/4
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Replying to @DavidPetts1 @salu1292 and
I *think* there were some possible Mediterranean isotopes from Wasperton (although memory fails which side of the Med they were from - North or South)
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Replying to @DavidPetts1 @salu1292 and
Key thing is to appreciate the very real limitations of these 'hard sciences' in picking up things like ethnicity which are essentially social phenomenon. For limitations of use of DNA there have been some great papers by
@Boothicus DNA/Isotopes aren't magic wands3 replies 0 retweets 3 likes -
Replying to @DavidPetts1 @salu1292 and
This isn't to downplay the importance of these questions or the need to better understand them better- but race/ethnicity aren't things that can be unproblematically mapped / identified scientifically - the methods/results need very careful parsing
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Replying to @DavidPetts1 @salu1292 and
There are a serious of useful papers exploring what DNA can and can't tell us here - https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rwar20/51/4 - the issues are far more complex than for isotopic analysis
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Replying to @DavidPetts1 @salu1292 and
And reading back on this thread - I'd emphasise I *do* usually proofread my work...
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Replying to @DavidPetts1 @salu1292 and
Thanks for the comments. I want to just say that no one was claiming isotopes demonstrated ancestry or that race and ethnicity are uncomplicated. The problem here I think is how discussions regarding Africans in British burial contexts are identified and discussed.
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Replying to @AdmiralHip @DavidPetts1 and
I pointed to the Ivory Bangle Lady as an example of issues with this, i.e. cranial recon identifies 'white' and 'black' features, then assumes North African origins because of their 'mixed' culture, and the isotopes may be Mediterranean or British. They seem inconclusive.
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In most of these cases though, they seem to have little scholarly discussion, but could certainly do with analysis and contextualisation. Especially with modern narratives of how medieval Britain was "white".
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Replying to @AdmiralHip @DavidPetts1 and
But as you say, the way that individuals are identified is complicated.
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Replying to @AdmiralHip @DavidPetts1 and
Yes, just catching up here. Ditto to what
@AdmiralHip says. Even with the lit/history fields a lot of figures have been glossed over so it's always nice to throw some light on these parts of history.0 replies 0 retweets 3 likesThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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