The Byzantine world grew from the palimpsest of Late Antique Anatolia, the Hellenized cities of the Aegean, and a patchwork of Balkan hinterlands. Archaeological strata from sites such as Tilbeşar Höyük and Oylum Höyük (southeastern Turkey), Ryahovets (Gorna Oryahovitsa, Bulgaria), and coastal caves in Sardinia record continuous habitation, fortress-building, and shifting trade across centuries. Coins, ceramics, church architecture and fortified towns document administrative continuity from the late Roman provincial system into medieval Byzantine institutions.
Genetic samples in this dataset span 100 BCE to 1636 CE, so a portion of the earliest genomes predate the formal Byzantine polity; they capture the ancestral populations that the Eastern Roman state governed. Archaeological data indicates persistent local populations in Anatolian plateaus and Balkan plains, intermittently augmented by soldiers, merchants and migrants from the Levant, Caucasus and Mediterranean islands.
Limited evidence suggests episodes of population movement at times of military crisis and trade expansion — for example, the 6th–7th century transformations after Justinianic wars and the 11th century migrations associated with frontier reorganization. While material culture marks imperial structures, ancient DNA helps reveal the biological threads that underpinned those cultural mosaics and highlights continuities and admixture over more than a millennium.
