Rewriting history with MOGAMBO

A science communicator has pointed out that a book on sale at a museum in Devon includes the claim that 11% of the population of Roman York was black, something which, he says, no confirmed sample supports. The case reopens the debate over how archaeogenetic findings are communicated.

The controversy came to light when someone took a closer look at the book. Almost three years after its publication, a science communicator had the chance to leaf through it at a museum in Devon and denounced that it contains "many lies". The specific point he flags is a sentence: that DNA shows that **11%** of the people of **Roman York** were black. His objection is blunt: there is not a single confirmed sample of black people in that city in the Roman period. The figure, he argues, was simply made up.

## What DNA says about Roman York

Archaeogenetics has revolutionised what we know about Roman Britain. Ancient DNA studies make it possible to reconstruct individual ancestries with a precision unthinkable two decades ago. But from there to extrapolating population percentages is an enormous leap. A sample of skeletons is not a demographic survey, least of all when we are talking about a city on the northern frontier of the empire, with garrisons and constant troop movements.

The problem is not whether there were or were not people of African origin in York. It is the conversion of an isolated genetic data point into a round statistic. An **11%** figure sounds like a finished study, a firm conclusion. And to assert that requires far more samples than exist, with well-documented funerary contexts and an explicit methodology.

## The role of museums as a megaphone

That the book is sold at a museum is no minor detail. Museums are spaces of cultural authority: what is exhibited or sold there reaches the public with a stamp of credibility that other channels lack. If a popular work includes an unsupported figure, the visitor has no way of knowing. They take it home as a fact.

The complaint does not question the diversity of Roman Britain, which is documented. It questions the fabrication of data to prop up a narrative, however well-intentioned that narrative may be. In popular history, rigour is not a luxury: it is the only guarantee that what we tell today will not have to be walked back tomorrow.

## Why precision matters in science communication

The episode touches a raw nerve. Archaeology has spent decades grappling with ideological interpretations, and genetics has entered that terrain with force. When a data point is simplified to fit a narrative, the damage is twofold: readers are misled, and ammunition is handed to those who want to discredit the entire discipline.

The **11%** figure is not backed by confirmed samples, according to the complaint. That does not make all research on mobility in the empire false. It makes it necessary to demand sources, sample sizes and contexts before turning a finding into a slogan.