Excavation of a Roman- Byzantine-Islamic-Norman sequence at Casale San Pietro. Credit: University of York

Ancient DNA reveals medieval Sicily as a genetic melting pot, where people buried in Christian and Muslim cemeteries shared roots in North Africa, Europe, and the Mediterranean.

Sicily changed rulers repeatedly between the 5th and 15th centuries CE, passing through the hands of the Roman and Byzantine Empires, Islamic dynasties, and the Normans and Swabians.

Yet centuries of violent regime changes did not necessarily bring wholesale changes in the people living on this Mediterranean island. Ancient DNA suggests that Sicily’s genetic diversity persisted through successive conquests, pointing to some population continuity despite the political upheaval.

The research, published in PLOS One, analyzed ancient DNA from 111 individuals excavated at 19 archaeological sites across Sicily. Their remains spanned the Roman Age to the Late Middle Ages, allowing researchers to examine ancestry across a long stretch of the island’s history as a hub of trade and conflict.

Shared ancestry across Christian and Muslim cemeteries

Dr. Nathan Wales, from the University of York’s Department of Archaeology, said, “Contrary to some past ideas, we can see this period shouldn’t be considered to be the ‘Dark Ages,’ but rather a dynamic period with interactions and distant connections.

“From the individuals’ DNA, we see people buried in Christian and Muslim cemeteries had similar ancestries stemming from North Africa and the European and Mediterranean area.”

Those Mediterranean connections extended farther south. The genetic data also showed that people of sub-Saharan African descent lived on Sicily throughout the medieval period, suggesting a long history of ongoing migration across the Mediterranean.

Everyday Sicilians missing from written history

Dr. Aurore Monnereau led the study and completed the work as part of her PhD at the University of York’s Department of Archaeology. She said, “While historical records are important to our understanding of the past, they often leave the experiences of ‘everyday’ people in the shadows, capturing major events of the Middle Ages through the lens of their authors.

“Through the analysis of ancient DNA, our study seeks to restore some of those missing voices. By integrating aDNA with written and archaeological evidence, we show that Sicily served as a central crossroads in the highly interconnected medieval world.”

The persistence of genetic diversity challenges the idea that Sicily’s conquests involved large-scale population replacement. The researchers’ broader interpretation also considers how people of different faiths lived alongside one another during these changing regimes.

Professor Martin Carver, from the University of York’s Department of Archaeology, said, “The study has shed a new light on people who traditionally don’t appear in the historical record, showing Christians and Muslims to have largely lived in prosperous multi-faith societies until the early thirteenth century, when Sicily became part of the Holy Roman Empire.”

The researchers emphasize that data from additional archaeological sites across the Mediterranean will be needed to develop a more detailed understanding of how these populations lived and changed over time.

Reference: “Genetic histories of individuals from multi-faith medieval Sicily” by Aurore Monnereau, Paola Orecchioni, Derek Hamilton, Eleanor Joan Green, Ian Noble, Richard Hagan, Marcela Sandoval-Velasco, Alessandra Molinari, Martin Carver, Camilla F. Speller and Nathan Wales, 24 June 2026, PLOS ONE.
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0350298

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