Abstract
The Phoenicians were an influential maritime civilization that arose out of the Late Bronze Age Levant, before going on to establish trans-Mediterranean trade networks, linked by new settlements which they founded during the Iron Age. The island of Motya, off the western coast of Sicily, has long been used as a case study for the Phoenician settlement of the Western Mediterranean. Recent advances in ancient DNA sequencing have demonstrated both the incorporation of indigenous maternal lineages into West Phoenician society and the mobility of lineages between Phoenician sites in the Mediterranean. This study successfully sequenced the archaeological remains of seven ancient Phoenicians from the island of Motya, including two sets of remains from the Motya Tophet, a sacred space containing the remains of cremated infants. The mitochondrial haplotypes assigned to these samples were all determined to be European in origin, which was attributed to the incorporation of indigenous Sicilian women into the Phoenician society on Motya. Additional datasets, including 30 Imperial era Romans from the Necropolis of Fara Sabina, and the 36 modern Tunisians were also sequenced for use as comparative population, although no evidence of non indigenous Sicilian was detected. Surprising recovery of DNA from cremated infant remains out of the Motya Tophet also provided some insight into the Tophet phenomena. Evidence from the Roman dataset also demonstrated a large amount of non-European lineages, some of potential Phoenician origin, were present in Imperial Era Rome. Overall, this research contributed another piece to the emerging picture of Phoenician society provided by ancient DNA, and to the gradual development of Ancient DNA as an important research tool in Phoenician studies.