Image copyright Plos One Image caption The individuals appear to have been buried in accordance with Islamic rites

Researchers have identified what may be the earliest Muslim burials in France.

The three skeletons unearthed at Nimes show indications of Islamic burial rites and are thought to date to the eighth century AD.

A team used DNA, radiocarbon dating and archaeological analysis to show the individuals may have been North African soldiers from a brief occupation of southern France by an Islamic army.

Details of the analysis are published in the journal Plos One.

In each of the three graves, the bodies were placed on their right-hand sides facing south-east - in the direction of Mecca. The way the burial pit was dug, with a lateral niche closed off by slabs or stones also corresponds to a traditional Islamic burial practice.

Analysis of the skeletons reveals that two of the three males were in their late twenties or early thirties, while the other was about 50 years of age.

Radiocarbon dating of all three burials gave age ranges within the 7th and 8th centuries.

The scientists also carried out genetic analysis on the remains. They found that the Y chromosome DNA from all three males belonged to a type very common in Berbers from North Africa, but largely absent from Europe, including France.

Mitochondrial DNA - which is passed down from a mother to her offspring - from one of the younger males also belonged to a specifically African lineage. But mitochondrial DNA from the other two burials belonged to types that are found both in Europe and North Africa.

In their Plos One paper, the team from the University of Bordeaux and France's Inrap archaeological centre, propose how the apparently Muslim individuals came to be in southern France at this time.

In the early 8th Century, Nimes was part of the Visigothic Kingdom, comprising the territory of present-day Spain, Portugal and south-eastern France (Septimania).

But in 711, Muslim troops invaded the Iberian Peninsula and rapidly conquered the territories held by the Visigoths, crossing the eastern Pyrenees into what is now France in 719.

This army, representing the medieval Umayyad Caliphate may have established alliances with the local population against a common enemy from the north: the Franks, a Germanic people who later gave their name to France.

Co-author Yves Gleize and colleagues propose that the three individuals were troops in this conquering Umayyad army, possibly as part of a local garrison.

"The joint archaeological, anthropological and genetic analysis of three early medieval graves at Nimes provides evidence of burials linked with Muslim occupation during the 8th Century," said Dr Gleize.

The next earliest Muslim burials in France are from the 13th Century in Marseille.