Biology subjects

Hofmanova, Z.

Publications and source records attributed to Hofmanova, Z..

5 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Unveiling the complexity of post-Roman polity formation using ancient DNA

The transformation of the Roman world (4th-9th centuries CE) culminating in the dissolution of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century marked a fundamental transition in European history. "Barbarian" groups and Roman provincial societies merged into enduring political frameworks in some places but not in others. Key questions persist regarding the regionally specific nature of this transformation. Here, we present one of the most densely sampled early medieval datasets to date, enabling the reconstruction of a post-Roman polity at an unprecedented micro-regional resolution. Our integrated genetic and archaeological analysis of two Roman-period (n=68) and five post-Roman (n=246) sites from the Little Hungarian Plain, a former Roman frontier region, reveals a significant increase in Northern European genetic ancestry, likely reflecting a large-scale population movement into the region. Moreover, while all post-Roman sites, dated to the time of the Langobard Kingdom, share similar genetic profiles, burial practices, and material culture, they display distinct patterns of social organization, especially regarding the role that biological relatedness played in each community. Our results suggest that distinct social hierarchies might have existed between sites, and their intensive connectivity probably formed the basis for regional-level organisation within the post-Roman polity. Our study provides a framework for investigating how new polities take shape after the collapse of major political systems. Applied more broadly, this approach can deepen our understanding of societal transformation across early medieval Europe and beyond, offering a richer and more nuanced view of the human past than ever before.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2025

Detecting and Quantifying Networks of Biological Kinship via Exponential Family Random Graph Models

Genetic relatedness between ancient humans can help to identify close and distant connections between groups and populations, uncovering signatures of demographic histories such as identifying mating networks or long-range migration. Critical to researchers are the characteristics that connected individuals, or groups of individuals, share, and how these characteristics interact and are correlated. Here we use Exponential Random Graph models as a method to explore demographic and contextual parameters that may help to explain the significant drivers of the topology of mating networks, as well as to quantify their effects. We show through simulations that model selection and coefficient estimators facilitate the exploration of such networks, and apply the method to individuals from a collection of Avar-associated cemeteries from the Carpathian Basin dating to the 6th to the 9th centuries CE.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2022

Investigating community formation through dense spatial and temporal sampling of 5-6th century cemeteries in Pannonia

As the collapse of the Western Roman Empire accelerated during the 4th and 5th centuries, arriving "barbarian" groups began to establish new communities in the border provinces of the declining (and eventually former) empire. This was a time of significant cultural and political change throughout not only these border regions but Europe as a whole.1,2 To better understand post-Roman community formation in one of these key frontier zones after the collapse of the Hunnic movement, we generated new paleogenomic data for a set of 38 burials from a time series of three 5th century cemeteries3-5 at Lake Balaton, Hungary. We utilized a comprehensive sampling approach to characterize these cemeteries along with data from 38 additional burials from a previously published mid-6th century site6 and analyzed them alongside data from over 550 penecontemporaneous individuals7-19. The range of genetic diversity in all four of these local burial communities is extensive and wider ranging than penecontemporaneous Europeans sequenced to date. Despite many commonalities in burial representation and demography, we find that there were substantial differences in genetic ancestry between the sites. We detect evidence of northern European gene flow into the Lake Balaton region. Additionally, we observe a statistically significant association between dress artefacts and genetic ancestry among 5th century genetically female burials. Our analysis shows that the formation of early Medieval communities was a multifarious process even at a local level, consisting of genetically heterogeneous groups.

genetics↗

bioRxiv2022

Between fishing and farming: palaeogenomic analyses reveal cross-cultural interactions triggered by the arrival of the Neolithic in the Danube Gorges

While early Neolithic populations in Europe were largely descended from early Aegean farmers, there is also evidence of episodic gene flow from local Mesolithic hunter-gatherers into early Neolithic communities. Exactly how and where this occurred is still unknown. Here we report direct evidence for admixture between the two groups at the Danube Gorges in Serbia. Analysis of palaeogenomes recovered from skeletons revealed that second-generation mixed individuals were buried amidst individuals whose ancestry was either exclusively Aegean Neolithic or exclusively local Mesolithic. The mixed ancestry is also reflected in a corresponding mosaic of grave goods. With its deep sequence of occupation and its unique dwellings that suggest at least semi-sedentary occupation since the late Mesolithic, the area of the Danube Gorges has been at the center of the debate about the contribution of Mesolithic societies to the Neolithisation of Europe. As suggested by our data, which were processed exclusively with uncertainty-aware bioinformatic tools, it may have been precisely in such contexts that close interactions between these societies were established, and Mesolithic ancestry and cultural elements were assimilated.

genomics↗

bioRxiv2020

The mixed genetic origin of the first farmers of Europe

The precise genetic origins of the first Neolithic farming populations, as well as the processes and the timing of their differentiation, remain largely unknown. Based on demogenomic modeling of high-quality ancient genomes, we show that the early farmers of Anatolia and Europe emerged from a multiphase mixing of a Near Eastern population with a strongly bottlenecked Western hunter-gatherer population after the Last Glacial Maximum. Moreover, the population branch leading to the first farmers of Europe and Anatolia is characterized by a 2,500-year period of extreme genetic drift during its westward range expansion. Based on these findings, we derive a spatially explicit model of the population history of Southwest Asia and Europe during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene. One-Sentence SummaryEarly European farmers emerged from multiple post LGM mixtures and experienced extreme drift during their westward expansion.

evolutionary biology↗