Evidence for Migration Influx into the Ancient Greek Colony of Metaponto: A Population Genetics Approach Using Dental Nonmetric Traits H. RATHMANN, a * G. SALTINI SEMERARI b AND K. HARVATI a,c a Paleoanthropology Section, Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoecology, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany b Institute of Classical Archaeology, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany c Centre for Advanced Studies ‘Words, Bones, Genes, Tools’, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany ABSTRACT Ancient Greek colonies were founded by Greek seafarers all along the Mediterranean coast as early as the eighth century BC. Despite extensive archaeological and historical research, the population structure of the inhabitants of Greek colonies and their relationship to indigenous populations are still debated. Here, we perform a biodistance analysis to reconstruct migration and gene flow between the ancient Greek colony of Metaponto (southern Italy) and indigenous groups in the surrounding hinterland (900–250 BC). We collected dental nonmetric trait data of 355 human skeletons from the indigenous Italic sites of Santa Maria d’Anglona, Incoronata and Passo di Giacobbe. This data set is compared with an urban and rural sample of the Greek colony of Metaponto comprising 351 individual dentitions. The R-matrix approach is used to estimate inter-population relationships and F ST . The resulting kinship coefficients indicate that the three indigenous groups exhibit greater similarity to each other and possess lesser similarity to the two Metapontian samples. Interestingly, the two samples of Metaponto are least similar to each other, although they are geographically very close. The F ST estimates confirm this pattern and reveal greater biological variation between the two nearby Metaponto samples (F ST = 0.0603) than between the three geographically fairly distant indigenous groups (F ST = 0.0389). We conclude that the Greek colony of Metaponto included large numbers of people with diverse geographical origins, whereas the indigenous Italic communities of the surrounding hinterland exhibited high levels of homogeneity and cohesion. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key words: biological distance; dental nonmetric traits; Greek colonisation; migration; southern Italy Introduction Starting from the eighth century BC, people coming from ancient Greece started to settle along the coasts of the Mediterranean. Greek colonies were founded at the shores of the Black Sea, Anatolia, southern Italy, Sicily, North Africa and along the coast of southern France and Spain. Archaeological evidence suggests that they initially settled in small groups, sometimes embedding themselves within the local indigenous populations. With time, however, Greek colonies became increasingly urbanised and culturally distinct settlements. The Greek colonisation has been called ‘one of the most important cultural encounters in world history’ (De Angelis, 2016: 101), and its conse- quences in Mediterranean history were profound and long-lasting. It contributed to the creation of a Mediterranean-wide network of exchanges (Malkin, 2005), to the development of urbanisation along its shores (Malkin, 1994) and to the spread of the alphabet (Boardman, 2014). Decades of extensive archaeological and historical research have greatly enhanced our understanding of this process, yet no consensus has been reached by researchers regarding its interpretation. Especially contentious are questions concerning the geographical origin of the colonisers, and whether and to what extent indigenous populations actively participated in the colonial process (see, for example, contributions in * Correspondence to: Hannes Rathmann, Paleoanthropology Section, Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoecology, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Rümelinstrasse 23, Tübingen 72070, Germany. e-mail: hannes.rathmann@uni-tuebingen.de Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 17 February 2016 Revised 9 July 2016 Accepted 29 September 2016 International Journal of Osteoarchaeology Int. J. Osteoarchaeol. (2016) Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/oa.2569