This is quite interesting. DNA research done on 7th century burials in Kent and Dorset showed West-African ancestry in several individuals:
Archaeogenetics, the study of ancient DNA, can reveal powerful insights into kinship and the movement of individuals in (pre)history. Here, the authors report on the identification of two individuals with genetic profiles consistent with recent sub-Saharan African ancestry, both of whom were buried in early-medieval cemeteries in southern Britain. Focusing primarily on a sub-adult female from Updown in Kent, the authors explore the societal and cultural contexts in which these individuals lived and died, and the widening geographic links indicated by their presence, pointing back to the Byzantine reconquest of North Africa in AD 533–534.
Which means that even in the depths of “Dark Ages Britain” there were links with the outside world, stretching as far away as (North) Africa. As the research makes clear, the Updown Girl was clearly part of a family already settled in Kent for some time before she died. We already knew that African people lived in Britain during the Roman occupation, but having evidence they were also present afterwards is new, as far as I know.
It’s also shows off how much can be learned even from old archaeological finds: this girl was originally exhumed in 1989, when this sort of DNA based research was not even dreamt off.
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