BBC reports on a very, very cold case that’s been solved. A body found during roadwork, extending a highway between Cambridge and Huntington, England, has been conclusively identified as belonging to a Sarmatian nomad who came to the UK with the Roman Empire:
Archaeologists discovered a complete, well-preserved skeleton of a man, they named Offord Cluny 203645 – a combination of the Cambridgeshire village he was found in and his specimen number. He was buried by himself without any personal possessions in a ditch, so there was little to go on to establish his identity.
Dr Marina Silva of the Ancient Genomics Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute, in London, extracted and decoded Offord’s ancient DNA from a tiny bone taken from his inner ear, which was the best preserved part of the entire skeleton.
“This is not like testing the DNA of someone who is alive,” she explained.
“The DNA is very fragmented and damaged. However, we were able to (decode) enough of it.
“The first thing we saw was that genetically he was very different to the other Romano-British individuals studied so far.”
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At first, archaeologists thought Offord to be an unremarkable discovery of a local man. But DNA analysis at Dr Silva’s lab showed that he was from the furthest reaches of the Roman Empire, an area that is currently southern Russia, Armenia, and Ukraine.
The analysis showed him to be a Sarmatian, who are Iranian-speaking people, renowned for their horse-riding skills.
So how did he end up in a sleepy backwater of the empire so far from home?
To find the answers, a team from the archaeology department of Durham University used another exciting analysis technique to examine his fossilised teeth, which have chemical traces of what he ate.
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The analysis showed that until the age of six he ate millets and sorghum grains, known scientifically as C4 crops, which are plentiful in the region where Sarmatians were known to have lived.
But over time, analysis showed a gradual decrease in his consumption of these grains and more wheat, found in western Europe, according to Prof Janet Montgomery.
“The (analysis) tells us that he, and not his ancestors, made the journey to Britain. As he grew up, he migrated west, and these plants disappeared from his diet.”
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Historical records indicate that Offord could have been a cavalry man’s son, or possibly his slave. They show that around the time he lived, a unit of the Sarmatian cavalry incorporated into the Roman army was posted to Britain.