The Grave-Robbing Double Standard

Anthropologists analyzing newly dug-up old European bones is exciting DNA science. Anthropologists having in their collections old non-European bones their predecessors had analyzed is white racism.

Here’s a new preprint that’s fairly representative of all the exciting science currently being done courtesy of grave-robbing European cemeteries:

The Genomic Legacy of the Norman Conquest in Rural England

Flavio De Angelis, Elizabeth A. Nelson, Sam Leggett, Kalina Kassadjikova, Tanya R Pelayo, Rob Poulton, Todd Rae, Lars Fehren-Schmitz, Lia Betti, Carlos Eduardo G. Amorim

Abstract

The Norman Conquest of 1066 CE reshaped the political and cultural landscape of England, yet its demographic consequences remain poorly understood, particularly outside elite and urban contexts where historical evidence is concentrated. Here, we investigate the population history of a rural English community spanning the Conquest using genome-wide ancient DNA from the Priory Orchard site, a cemetery in Godalming (Surrey) in use between the 9th and early 13th centuries CE. We generated genomic data from 78 individuals and established radiocarbon dates for 98 individuals from the site. Population genetic analyses place Priory Orchard individuals within the genetic continuum of early medieval populations from the North Sea region. Ancestry modelling indicates that this rural community carried substantial Scandinavian/Viking-related ancestry alongside a persistent Saxon-related component and a smaller French-related contribution. However, stratifying individuals by date, before and after 1066 CE, reveals no clear genome-wide discontinuity across the Conquest horizon, suggesting demographic continuity through this crucial political and social transition. This pattern is consistent with historical and archaeological evidence indicating that many of the most visible transformations following the Conquest occurred primarily among the elite. Our results provide the first genomic perspective on communities living through the Norman Conquest and indicate that rural southern England saw persistent migration links with other areas facing the North Sea rather than abrupt population replacement.

In other words, while there was a fair amount of migration back and forth around the North Sea in the first millennium AD, (e.g., Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Vikings, and finally the French-speaking ex-Viking conquest in 1066) before the long lag with little immigration to Britain from 1067 to Windrush, a couple of things should be kept in mind:

First, most of the first millennium newcomers were from nearby in northwestern Europe. They didn’t represent massive racial or cultural change. Second, sometimes they represented more elite replacement (e.g., Romans and Normans) than massive demographic great replacements.

Note, that these state-of-the-art DNA findings are largely in accordance with the old annals, with physical anthropology (e.g., digging up skulls and measuring them with calipers and comparing the data to living people), with cultural anthropology (e.g., digging up objects buried along with their owners), and with the more genetic anthropology that became possible in the later 20th Century before full scale DNA analyses became affordable.

But, my point for this post is that digging up European cemeteries to track the racial ancestry of populations is currently considered awesome.

At the same time, having dug up non-European cemeteries, or even just buying bones from indigenous skeleton trade merchants, to track the racial ancestry of populations, however, is white racism.

From the New York Times news section:

Europe’s Museums Confront the (Literal) Skeletons in Their Closets

Institutions are grappling with the human remains in their collections that were used to justify debunked theories about race.

Paywall here.