Biological Relatedness and Prehistoric Population Structure in Southern Germany in the Light of High Resolution Palaeogenomes from Caves of the Franconian Jura

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In this research project, prehistoric human skeletal finds from caves of the Frankenalb will be genetically investigated in order to reconstruct the population structure and biological history of this region during the pre-Christian millennia with the help of a combination of high and low coverage genomes. The anthropological finds of the northern and middle Frankenalb between Forchheim, Nürnberg and Amberg are likely to be chronologically heterogeneous, but date predominantly to the Iron Age. The precise archaeological and anthropological background will be investigated in a second project submitted in parallel by Andreas Schäfer from the University of Bamberg. The genetic investigations in Mainz will be carried out on two different levels: in a first step, family relationships between the individuals will be reconstructed in order to investigate the question of how the caves were used. In a second step, high-resolution genomes will be analysed to characterise the population dynamics of the millennia before Christ in southern Germany on a large scale and in comparison, to neighbouring regions. In total, 70 complete genomes will be analysed for this purpose, 20 of them in high-resolution sequencing depth. The high coverage genomes will be used to uncover more subtle population structures and distant kinship relationships.