We were inspired to study these individuals based on their unusual burial context as well as the identification of two different types of artificial cranial deformation in two of the individuals. We combine bioarchaeological analysis with radiographic imaging, stable isotopes analysis, and ancient DNA to analyze their dietary patterns, molecular sex, and genetic affinities in the context of the archaeological data and their bioarchaeological attributes.
While all three individuals were adolescent males with skeletal evidence of severe malnutrition and similar diets, the most striking observation is that they had major differences in their genetic ancestry.
Results of the genetic analyses of the nuclear ancient DNA data for these individuals indicate that the individual without artificial cranial deformation shows broadly West Eurasian associated-ancestry, the individual with tabular oblique-type has East Asian ancestry and the third individual with circular erect-type has Near Eastern associated-ancestry.
Based on these results, we speculate that artificial cranial deformation type may have been a visual indicator membership in a specific cultural group, and that these groups were interacting intimately on the Pannonian Plain during the Migration Period. Editor: Peter F. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The funders provided support in the form of salaries for authors DF and MN, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
