,Who were the Avars? Less known than Attila’s Huns, they were their more successful successors, who ruled much of Central and Eastern Europe for almost 250 years. We know that they came from Central Asia in the sixth century CE, but ancient authors and modern historians debated their provenance. Had their core group arrived from Western Eurasia, or were they descendants of the Mongolia-based empire of the Rouran, known as formidable enemies of China?

Recently, the genomes of nearly 800 prehistoric human individuals were successfully analyzed as part of a large-scale archaeogenetic program carried out in an extensive European and American collaboration. The results of the research were published in Nature on December 22, 2021.

Six members of RCH IAG participated in the Hungarian Molecular Life Science Conference from November 5th to 7th, 2021, in Eger where projects of the Institute of Archeogenomics were presented to representatives of the life sciences.

Through lectures by Dániel Gerber and Bea Szeifert and posters presented by Noémi Borbély and Erzsébet Fóthi, researchers and students gained insights into the population genetics research conducted at our institute, spanning prehistoric, early medieval, and present-day periods.

• The modern horse was domesticated around 2200 BCE in the northern Caucasus.
• In the centuries that followed it spread throughout Asia and Europe.
• To achieve this result, an international team of 162 scientists collected, sequenced and compared 273 genomes from ancient horses scattered across Eurasia.

Horses were first domesticated in the Pontic-Caspian steppes, northern Caucasus, before conquering the rest of Eurasia within a few centuries. These are the results of a study led by paleogeneticist Ludovic Orlando, CNRS, who headed an international team including archaeologist, archaeozoologist and geneticist researchers of the Research Centre for the Humanities. Answering a decades-old enigma, the study is published in Nature on 20 October 2021.

The statement, compiled and signed by 68 researchers from 31 countries, was initiated by David Reich's laboratory at Harvard Medical School. The starting point was an online, global, and multidisciplinary workshop in November 2020 focused on discussing ethical issues and guidelines for archaeogenetic research.

The rapid growth of ancient DNA and its impact on archaeology (and other fields) has led to calls for a discussion about the ethical standards to govern such research. Best practices for sampling human remains for scientific analysis and engaging with stakeholder groups are key ethical discussions among researchers studying ancient DNA. While some guidelines have been previously proposed, there is no "one-size-fits-all" approach to ancient DNA ethics because of the notable variation in research contexts worldwide. What has been missing is a set of principles that can apply universally and are agreed upon by a substantial number of researchers from different disciplines and locations.

Between September 23rd and 25th, the ERC HistoGenes group held its second plenary meeting in Vienna. During the three-day meeting, project participants presented and discussed the results of the first research year and identified future key research directions and strategies. Our institute was represented by Anna Szécsényi-Nagy and Balázs Mende at the event. From spring 2020 until September 2021, the ERC team of the Institute of Archeogaenomics collected nearly 3,000 Migration Period human DNA samples together with the staff of the Institute of Archeological Sciences of Eötvös Loránd University and prepared them for complete genomic analysis in our institute's ancient DNA laboratory.In addition to the Hungarian samples, our deputy director, Balázs Mende, visited collaborating institutes in Serbia, Slovenia, and Slovakia with our archaeologists (István Koncz, Levente Samu) and anthropologist (Olga Spekker) colleagues.

For further events of the project visit the HistoGenes webpage: https://www.histogenes.org/

An archaeological excavation was carried out in the Royal Crypt at Tihany Abbey in 2021 spring led by the ELKH Research Centre for the Humanities (RCH). The aim of the wall research and archaeological excavation was to determine the age of the graves as accurately as possible, to review previous observations on the reconstructions and alterations, and to identify new observations and discoveries. The excavation was completed at the end of June and the evaluation and processing of the findings has started. Experts will restore the findings, compile documentation, and, if necessary, carry out further archival and museum research  to uncover as much information as possible about the history of the undercroft over the past thousand years. Funding for the multidisciplinary project was provided by ELKH.

For the whole article please go to the elkh.org

Our aim is to introduce selected projects from our laboratory to the general public before publication, thus providing insight into the daily struggles and details of our work. In this small review we announce the archaeogenetic results of one of the most exciting findings of the excavations at the M7 roadworks concerning a mass grave and other associated burials at Balatonkeresztúr site.