What question about the population would you be hoping to address by doing this?
Soph

Sorry Mike, this doesn't look like a good investment of a great deal of cash to me, especially since the Vikings studies seem to have demonstrated that there is no way to separate migrants from the 'Belgic' areas in prehistory, and therefore the Romano-British population, from the early medieval migrations from the same parts of Europe? I'm absolutely sure there are family links to the present population (or such of it as is from the area long term) but again I'm not sure what that tells us that we don't know - that the population of rural Norfolk was not highly mobile between the 10th century and the 20th? Would that be such a surprise? I think it has to wait for a really robust research question.

Anyway, reburying the skeletons shouldn't make them totally inaccessible in the long term should it - we dug 'em up once after all!
Soph

The Department of Biological Sciences at Kent University will have stronger arguements than I could provide - which is one of the reasons that I want to find out more about their proposed investigations. It would also be of interest to know what they say about suitable material for samples and about contamination.
The cost of DNA testing is likely to fall as it ceases to be an unusual practice. If the government gets its way and puts us all into a DNA database, then the cost of testing will drop dramatically.
Samples could be taken and kept until the cost is reasonable; until funding is available; or until a body such as Kent University offers to do the job.
I doubt that the skeletons would ever be available again after re-burial.

I am sorry but I have to agree with Soph on this one. From what I have read recently 'british' DNA is too similar to 'european' DNA to offer any conclusive proof of origin. East Anglian DNA is closer to Dutch and German DNA than northern welsh is to southern welsh.
Having said that, it might be interesting to establish whether any of the Roman units stationed at Brancaster left behind any descendants. Two units definately at Brancaster in the late 4th early 5th centuries were from Dalmatia and Acquitane. Their DNA may be identifiable from the saxo/belgic/british DNA.
Phil.

Hi Dave
OK you have a point that material culture doesn't tell you much about individuals biological ethnicity, be it those descended from populations who immigrated in prehistory, in Roman times, or in the early middle ages - but as a number of people have said it doesn't seem to be possible for Romano-Brits to be separated out from Anglo-Saxons by DNA. They are from too similar and too mixed a background. A more interesting question for me though is 'why that would be interesting?' We can see that these people were living 'Anglo-Saxon' lives, so is who their great grandparents were the most important thing? There is a real danger of getting sucked back into a new version of the physical anthropology approach that blighted Anglo-Saxon studies in the early 20th century.

Secondly. as a bit of an aside, the whole Charter point is a red herring! Just because no charters survive from Norfolk doesn't mean there weren't any - there are good reasons for archives to have been lost when the East Anglian Sees moved around, and in the Danelaw period, and anyway we do know a fair bit about landholding from later Saxon documentary sources. You're also trying to argue that documents which could only exist from the 7th century at the earliest, and in fact mainly from the 9th century, might shed light on population mixing taking place in the 5th and 6th centuries - it's a bit of a stretch isn't it? More to the point why would charters be any clearer an indication of biologically Saxon people than other material culture is... I'll leave that one.

Frankly DNA is fashionable, but that doesn't mean it can answer every question, or that it should be something everyone rushes to invest in without a clearly identified reason.
Soph

(PS; as far as I know Gabor Thomas has never had any particular interest in DNA studies - and I don't think his main sites have masses of burial evidence but I could be wrong. Was it just the Uni of Kent link that made you think so? If so he isn't there any more.)

Hi Dave,
I think we're essentially on the same page here - it is very interesting. I'm more or less a functionalist and on the whole I think things like farming change less because they are shaped by the land and what it's possible to get out of it - but that might well be considered old fashioned of me. I guess the other argument is that the farming technology of the 'old Saxon' homelands is just another Iron Age / edge of the Roman world rural economy, and there is no real reason why it should be that different from the rural Romano-British systems? I don't really have enough information to back that up, it's just a thought.

Otherwise, I was only reading your remarks in the context of the DNA thing because that's where the thread started, but I can see that your questions might be addressed in other ways. I think it just makes me nervous when people get very excited about DNA in the absence of a research question because it could so easily lead to ethnicity becoming the most 'important' thing you can find out about someone - and we all know where that leads!
Soph

I see no problem with knowing the Sedgeford people's (or one's own) ethnicity - most people in the world consider this important and only in western Europe is an interest seen as non-PC.
DNA study continues to develop and to fail to take samples while the opportunity allows will, I believe, lead to regret later. What will DNA be able to reveal in 10 years time? - none of us contributing here know the answer.

I have read 'The origins of the British' and found it was an interesting but difficult read. However I am not convinced that some of the points made in the book are correct and I would like to read a similar book by a different author to obtain anotherviewpoint. Saying that I am convinced that there is a lot of continuity between the Iron Age and early Saxon period and that Romanisation was just a thin veneer. I would like to explore this in more detail.

Old Nic - that's interesting - "AS invasions only contributed 5% of the English gene pool" and "Anglo-Saxons we meet at Sedgeford are part of a long established indigenous population, unlikely to be new people arriving as a result of invasion or migration". Now bear in mind I'm not an archaeologist, only one of the summer grunts, so please speak slowly.
If the Sedgeford people were long standing indigenous why do we think they were AS? As there were no homo sapiens here until the last ice age has ended, whereabouts in Europe did the Sedgeford tribe ancestors come from?
I've just ordered both books from the library, by the way.

I too have only a very basic understanding of DNA, how it is extracted, identified etc. A couple of years ago, in the course of my work, I was lucky enough to spend some time working with a SOCO -scenes of crimes officer. He explained that there were more than 117 different strains (not sure if that is the right word) of DNA present in the population of Britain, except in certain areas of the country. For instance in the Cambridgeshire fens there were only about 11. He was not suggesting that everyone from the fens was inbred but that the fens had managed to escape the invasions / migrations that the rest of the country was subject to. The same is probably true of the Sedgeford region and Norfolk as a whole. Normal for Norfolk is an accepted medical term, perhaps suggesting that people from Norfolk differ in some way from the rest of the population.
Question, the 5% AS DNA mentioned. Is that it is only present in 5% of the population or is it that only 5% of our collective DNA can be traced to anglo-saxons. If the, latter what if any are the larger proportions, i.e. do we have 10% celt/briton/norman/roman etc? Is 5% the largest single DNA group. Perhaps I am not making myself clear, I have French Hugenot ancestors on my paternal side, Irish ancestors on my paternal side, my maternal side all hail from London and from my family tree I can tell that they were London or Berkshire back to the 14th century. What proportion of my DNA is French/Irish & British -anglo-saxon-norman etc? Would 5% of my DNA still be identifiable as anglo-saxon?

When I read Stephen Oppenheimer's book I was fairly convinced that I understood what the percentage meant. Now I am less certain but my understanding is that the AS DNA is present in an average of 5% of the population. The largest proportion of DNA originates from Iberia and there have been no recent invasions from that area. Interestingly the AS proportion of DNA is highest in Norfolk, round the Wash and central England. It is significantly lower in Southern England.

I just wonder if we are placing too much importance on this one factor and we should be considering a range of factors but not too sure what to suggest.

'Genome' by Matt Ridley explains a lot.

I mentioned the missing millions, again arguing from a position of relative ignorance. The waves of black death in the 14th century wiped out up to half of the population of England. If everyone who died was of 5th / 6th century anglo-saxon descent then would their contribution to todays gene pool be virtually nil? If repopulation, which came later, was from elsewhere then that would explain why the A/S contribution is so small. That means, perhaps, Oppenheimer is wrong to ignore it. Since the anglo-saxon influence was stronger in the south and east and these are the areas worst affected by the plague then it may well be that they suffered more than say native Britons in the extreme north and west.

Anglo-saxon seems to be the accepted term for anyone living in England in post roman times. Its' use seems generic despite the archaeology. Angles, saxons, jutes, frisians, franks and a host of others settled in England before during and after the roman period. Sometimes pushing the locals away before them, sometimes settling alongside sometimes integrating with them. However the anglo-saxon name has stuck and it will probably still be common useage in the future. Most people know that it is not correct but in the absence of anything else it does suffice.

The reason that the influx of anglo-saxons had little impact on our DNA as a whole is that the original settlers who crossed the land bridge in pre-history came from the east and south i.e either from or through the anglo-saxon 'areas'. You are absolutely right about the normans, very few indeed. Probably very few romans too. However, and it is just a theory -without proof, if large numbers of anglo-saxons did conquer large parts of England and if this conquest did displace all of the natives into wales or the southwest or scotland and the plague then almost wiped out this great host of anglo-saxons leaving the natives to repopulate the desolate areas then this could explain the lack of 'new' A/S DNA. It may well go some way to explaining the lack of either viking or norman DNA too.
Lots of ifs' and buts' I know and I am not sure if I could believe it myself but it does make an interesting discussion point.
"it seems that the number of arrivals after the neolithic must be smaller in number than the population at that stage otherwise the proportions of DNA would be different", the number of people living in the british isles at the time that the land bridge was lost was tiny compared to the anglo-saxon period, so either they had reproduced on an extremely grand scale or the newcomers had little or no impact on existing DNA.
Now I find myself agreeing with Mike, there are so many questions that could be answered by a thorough DNA scan of the sedgeford skeletons, only if such a scan could cover other cemeteries from before and after the sedgeford dates.

Phil,
When I writing the message yesterday I did wonder if there was any way to get back from the current precentages to the original population and decided that there wre too many variables and my maths was not goood enough. However I still think that this relationship needs to be explored.
My period is Iron Age to very late Saxon/Viking but from the various Bronze Age and earlier remains I feel that the population was higher than we believe. Additionally Butser, the expermential Iron Age farm, came up with some results that are disputed but suggest that a value for grain production per acre that was not achieved again to the early 1950s so this might imply a large population.
I cannot remember the name of the book but at Jarrow in the time of Bede they produced a lavish book which later generations believed had been produced in Italy from the style and quality. I wonderr if the Italian influence was a result of the Roman influence a few hundred years earlier.If so this implies some form of continuity. There are one or two other sites where I think there is some sort of a link between the Romans and Saxons which supports continuity rather than change.
Mike C
In the Neolithic most of the migration came from Iberia but there was also some people that came in from the Nordic region. This might be a possible route of introduction.

Very much a holding reply as I think there is a need to find another way of looking at the problem.

The Jarrow book is the Codex Amiatinus and this was no standard latin book but a very high quality document intended to be a high status present.
A different example involves West Sussex and this is more a hypothesis than any proven history. I suggest that some Christian Romano British survived at Chichester for several generations. These people were the reason that the Irish missionaries settled at Bosham and established a church there. This became a centre of learning which led to it becoming a royal manor. This centre supported the Celtic Church and this could be the reason why Wilfrid established his Roman church supporters at Selsey just along the coast. There is also the problem that the original name /meaning of Chichester is uncertain.

Thinking about some of the postings and the way the discussion was developing I was beginning to have a recollection that when I read many years ago Timothy Darvill's book Prehistoric Britain he had included a series of maps showing that in prehistoric times a pattern of fixed regions had developed. I have now looked at the book again but cannot find the maps I remember so I might have been thinking of the wrong book. However in Darvill's book there a number of maps showing the distribution of different types of artefacts and there is clearly some defined regions though the boundaries seem to be rather flexible between periods. I wonder if it is possible that some of these regions subsequently retained the Celtic system though other regions adopted Saxon ways.
I have tried to determine if the regions map with the different waves of settlers and their arrival routes idendified by Stephen Oppenheimer and it seems that the case is not proven.
Also Francis Pryor in Britain AD suggests that there were some deeply held prehistoric views and the population was sdufficiently large for some of these views to survive the Roman period. So is this confirmation that the prehistoric regions form the basis for the later split between Celtic and Saxon areas.