Mark Thomas

We have a Database Manager position to work with the Big Interdisciplinary Archaeological Database (BIAD), see: ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/se… The BIAD Wiki can be found here: biadwiki.org

Great PhD opportunity at the Estonian Biocentre, University of Tartu; Title: "Elucidating the fine-scale demographic history of the Eastern Baltic by incorporating haplotype-based analyses and modelling"; See: estonia.dreamapply.com/en_GB/courses/…

I have a 2 year postdoc position available on our 'COREX: from correlations to explanations' grant: cordis.europa.eu/project/id/951…. See: ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/se…... working at the intersection of archaeology, computational modelling and stats. Starts Nov 2025.

However, from the Early Iron Age until the Middle Ages, the appearance of eastern nomads in the region became a regular occurrence. Their genetic composition varied from steppe ancestry mixed with the local background to mostly East Asian ancestry with minimal local intermixing.

The analyses show that broad-scale ancestry proportions characteristic of present-day European populations have been present in the Ukraine region since the Bronze Age until today.

The North Pontic region, which encompasses present-day Ukraine, was for centuries a crossroads of migration from multiple directions, connecting the vast Eurasian Steppe with Central Europe.

The study was made possible by the resilience of Ukrainian researchers – second author Olga Utevska from V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University and MSCA4Ukraine fellow at @genomicstartu, and numerous archaeologists conducting excavations in Ukraine despite the war.

The paper: science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… Photo caption: Scythian burial in Skorobir necropolis in Bilsk hillfort Photo credit: Iryna Shramko

Migration and population mixing will have contributed to the high genetic diversity in geographically, culturally and socially homogeneous groups, with different genetic profiles present at the same site, the same time and among individuals with the same archaeological context.

At the same time, the rest of modern-day Ukraine was inhabited by people with both local Eastern European and Western and Southern European genetic heritage. These diverse origins can be linked to migrations and connections found in archaeological and/or historical records.

Very happy to share the results of my @MSCActions project done at @UGI_at_UCL with @mt_genes and @pontus_skoglund from @TheCrick. We used ancient DNA to reveal remarkably high genetic diversity in the region of modern-day @Ukraine over the last 3,500 years until ~500 years ago.

@AdamRutherford "At an axiomatic level"??? Really? Perhaps he misinterpreted the garment label and has been smoking his jacket.

Riddle me this, etc.

@leo_speidel @RIKEN_JP Congrats Leo! Our loss is Japan's gain.

Very excited to be starting my group this autumn at ithems.riken.jp/en @RIKEN_JP and we’re hiring! riken.jp/en/careers/res… Many more fellowship opportunities as well, please get in touch if interested and see you in Tokyo!

This is now published in Scientific Data: nature.com/articles/s4159…. The survey is expanded to 42 studies, and the paper now includes a Box 1: "Step-by-step best practices for archiving ancient genomics data in the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA)." I hope this will prove useful!

@ChrisStringer65 Obviously

Neanderthals didn't truly go extinct, but were rather absorbed into the modern human population, DNA study suggests livescience.com/health/genetic…

@ChrisStringer65 Well duh!

Humans might be responsible for megafauna extinctions after all cosmosmagazine.com/history/palaeo…

@NannonStevens @UCLarchaeology @ucl Congratulations Rhiannon!

Happy to be promoted to Professor of Archaeological Science ⁦@UCLarchaeology⁩ in ⁦@ucl⁩ ‘s Promotions 2023-24 ucl.ac.uk/human-resource…

Portrayal of character in Steve Coogan’s film The Lost King is defamatory, judge rules 👇 theguardian.com/uk-news/articl…

The train journey to the venue is when the work is done.

Yesterday, we published our paper on genetic analyses of early Celtic princely burials from Southwestern Germany today. An important piece of @JoGretzing’s award-winning PhD thesis, we explore kinship and ancestry from the late Hallstatt-Culture. 1/10