Motahareh Amjadi, who had been conducting her PhD research at our institute as a Stipendium Hungaricum scholarship recipient and a student at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) Doctoral School of Biology, Department of Genetics has submitted her doctoral thesis titled “Genetic investigation of ancient and recent human populations in the Iranian Plateau”. On June 18, 2026, she successfully defended her dissertation before a committee appointed by the university, receiving the highest distinction of summa cum laude.

The political, demographic and cultural transformations that took place in Western Europe following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire between the 4^th and 6^th centuries CE have long been central questions in the study of this period. Yet surprisingly little is known about how these changes affected the communities living in the frontier regions of the former empire. A new study based on archaeogenomic and isotope analyses and archaeological finds paints a more nuanced picture of the organisation of early medieval communities in the Langobard-period Little Hungarian Plain (previously part of the Pannonian provinces of the Roman Empire), and how their connections could have served as a basis for the emerging new political systems. The study was conducted as part of the HistoGenes project, with an international team including colleagues of our institute. Their findings were published in Science.

For the second time, an international researcher will have the opportunity to join the MTA-ELTE RCH Momentum Bioarchaeology Research Group through her project after receiving funding through the Momentum MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme. Following epigenetics researcher Chen Kozulin, archaeogeneticist Ana Arzelier was also successful in securing funding under the programme’s second call with her research proposal aimed at tracing the Celtic genetic heritage.

Launched in May 2020, the ambitious HistoGenes project set out to gain a deeper understanding of the population history of Eastern Central Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, during the period of major migrations and early medieval political and cultural transformations (AD 400–900). By combining the most advanced methods of genetics, archaeology, anthropology, and history, the international research team aimed to shed new light on this transformative era. From February 25–27, 2026, participants gathered in Vienna for a final conference to discuss and present the most important findings of their work—concluding this year—and to explore possible future research perspectives.

New results on the history of horse domestication were published in the current issue of Acta Archaeologica Hungaricae in late 2025. The results confirm that an early horse lineage—widespread prior to the emergence of modern domestic horses—survived into the Middle Bronze Age in the Carpathian Basin. The study was conducted as part of a joint research programme of the ELTE RCH Institute of Archaeogenomics and the MTA–ELTE RCH Momentum BASES Research Group, which investigates the history of horses in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE.

This year, among the nominees from Hungary, Dániel Gerber, a research fellow at our institute, received the Danubius Young Scientist Award, an honor granted by the Vienna-based Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe (IDM) and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Women, Science and Research.

Over the past two months, researchers from the Institute of Archaeogenomics have presented their current and exciting findings at numerous scientific conferences both in Hungary and abroad. In this summary, we provide an overview of the talks delivered.

In 2003, the graves of 11 individuals from the Early Bronze Age were found in two grave groups at the Balatonkeresztúr-Réti-dűlő site during excavations along the route of motorway M7 in Hungary. One of these graves (no. 13) belonged to a woman aged 35–45 at the time of her death. Her skull was preserved in very good condition, providing the basis for the first facial reconstruction of a Bronze Age woman in Hungary, completed in 2022.