The Role of Emerging Elites in the Formation of Post-Roman Italian Society

The study, titled “The Role of Emerging Elites in the Formation and Development of Communities after the Fall of the Roman Empire,” provides insight into how shifts in political power and migration influenced the development of rural communities forming around early medieval elites in post-Roman Europe. In it, the researchers conclude that elite families with similar genetic ancestry likely played an important role in founding new communities. These communities then attracted and incorporated individuals from a variety of genetic, social, and cultural backgrounds.

Genomic analysis carried out at an early medieval (sixth to eighth century C.E.) cemetery in Collegno near Turin shows that elite families with shared central-northern European genetic ancestry founded new communities in northern Italy following the fall of the Roman Empire. The team of researchers combined traditional historical and archaeological methods with paleogenomic and isotopic data to arrive at their results. The team sequenced the genomes of twenty-eight skeletons from an early medieval cemetery and combined these with previously published information gained from twenty-four individuals from the same site, resulting in a sample size of fifty-two individuals that represented all burial groups and phases of the site. These data were then combined with the results of various isotopic analyses to draw additional conclusions on the individuals’ mobility patterns and diets. For example, similarities in dietary preferences were observed among closely related individuals compared to those who were most distant or unrelated.