Abstract Joint phylogenetic analysis of ancient DNA (aDNA) with modern phylogenies is hampered by low sequence coverage and post-mortem deamination, often resulting in overconservative or incorrect assignment. We provide a new efficient likelihood-based workflow, pathPhynder, that takes advantage of all the polymorphic sites in the target sequence. This effectively evaluates the number of ancestral and derived alleles present on each branch and reports the most likely placement of an ancient sample in the phylogeny and a haplogroup assignment, together with alternatives and supporting evidence. To illustrate the application of pathPhynder, we show improved Y chromosome assignments for published aDNA sequences, using a newly compiled Y variation data set (120,908 markers from 2,014 samples) that significantly enhances Y haplogroup assignment for low coverage samples. We apply the method to all published male aDNA samples from Africa, giving new insights into ancient migrations and the relationships between ancient and modern populations. The same software can be used to place samples with large amounts of missing data into other large non-recombining phylogenies such as the mitochondrial tree.