50.  John Robb, “Towards a Critical Ötziography: Inventing Prehistoric Bodies,” in Social Bodies, ed. Helen Lambert and Maryon McDonald (Oxford: Berghahn, 2009), 104.

51.  Robb, “Towards a Critical Ötziography,” 105.

52.  Robb, “Towards a Critical Ötziography,” 106.

53.  Robb, “Towards a Critical Ötziography.” See also Nina Nordström, “The Immortals: Prehistoric Individuals as Ideological and Therapeutic Tools in Our Time,” in Archaeologists and the Dead: Mortuary Archaeology in Contemporary Society, ed. Howard Williams and Melanie Giles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 204–232; Amade M’charek, “Beyond Fact or Fiction: On the Materiality of Race in Practice,” Cultural Anthropology 28, no. 3 (2005): 420–442.

54.  Robb, “Towards a Critical Ötziography,” 112.

55.  Viking Warrioress, statement by Neil Price. Emphasis in original.

56.  Viking Warrioress, statement by Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson.

57.  Secrets of the Dead, season 18, episode 4, “Viking Warrior Queen,” directed by Alexandar Dzerdz and Gautier Dubois, released July 7, 2020, on PBS. Statement by Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, who was also acting as historical consultant for the production.

58.  Neil Price et al., “Viking Warrior Women? Reassessing Birka Chamber Grave Bj.581,” Antiquity 93, no. 367 (2019): 181–198.

59.  Hedenstierna-Jonson et al., “Female Viking Warrior,” 854.

60.  “Supporting Information 2,” in Hedenstierna-Jonson et al., “Female Viking Warrior,” 20, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1002%2Fajpa.23308&file=ajpa23308-sup-0002-suppinfo2.docx.

61.  Price et al., “Viking Warrior Women?,” 193.

62.  Julie Solometo and Joshua Moss, “Picturing the Past: Gender in National Geographic Reconstructions of Prehistoric Life,” American Antiquity 78, no. 1 (2013): 124.

63.  Stephanie Moser, “The Visual Language of Archaeology: A Case Study of the Neanderthals,” Antiquity 66, no. 253 (1992): 831–844.

64.  Solometo and Moss, “Picturing the Past,” 124.

65.  Joan Gero, “Honoring Ambiguity/Problematizing Certitude,” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 14, no. 3 (2007): 320.

66.  “Supplementary material,” in Price et al., “Viking Warrior Women?” 23, https://static.cambridge.org/content/id/urn:cambridge.org:id:article:S0003598X18002582/resource/name/S0003598X18002582sup001.pdf.

67.  See Gero on “machining data” as one of several strategies for stabilizing evidence and producing knowledge that appears unambiguous. Gero, “Honoring Ambiguity,” 320–321.

68.  “Viking Women,” Real Vikings. Hedenstierna-Jonson et al., “A Female Viking Warrior,” 853: the abstract states that “An earlier osteological classification of the individual as female was considered controversial in a historical and archaeological context. A genomic confirmation of the biological sex of the individual was considered necessary to solve the issue.”

69.  Roger Cooter and Stephen Pumfrey, “Separate Spheres and Public Places: Reflections on the History of Science Popularization and Science in Popular Culture,” History of Science 32, no. 3 (1994): 237.

70.  David A. Kirby, “Science Consultants, Fictional Films, and Scientific Practice,” Social Studies of Science 33, no. 2 (2003): 231–268; José van Dijck, “Reading the Human Genome Narrative,” Science as Culture 5, no. 2 (1995): 217–247.

71.  M’charek, “Beyond Fact or Fiction,” 436.

72.  Price et al., “Viking Warrior Women?” 182.

73.  Price et al., “Viking Warrior Women?” 182.

74.  Price at al., “Viking Warrior Women?” 181, 182.

75.  Judith Jesch, “Some Further Discussion of the Article on Bj 581,” Norse and Viking Ramblings, September 18, 2017, http://norseandviking.blogspot.com/2017/09/some-further-discussion-of-article-on.html.

76.  Simone Rödder, “Reassessing the Concept of a Medialization of Science: A Story from the ‘Book of Life,’ ” Public Understanding of Science 18, no. 4 (2009): 452–463.

77.  Elizabeth D. Jones, “Ancient Genetics to Ancient Genomics: Celebrity and Credibility in Data-Driven Practice,” Biology and Philosophy 34, no. 27 (2019): 1–35.

78.  Nelkin and Lindee, DNA Mystique, xxii. See also Jones, “Ancient Genetics to Ancient Genomics,” 7–14.

79.  Frank Marcinkowski and Matthias Kohring, “The Changing Rationale of Science Communication: A Challenge to Scientific Autonomy,” Journal of Science Communication 13, no. 3 (2014): 1–8.

80.  Christopher M. Stojanowski and William N. Duncan, “Engaging Bodies in the Public Imagination: Bioarchaeology as Social Science, and Humanities,” American Journal of Human Biology 27, no. 1 (2015): 52, 57.

81.  Stojanowski and Duncan, “Engaging Bodies,” 57.

82.  Stojanowski and Duncan, “Engaging Bodies,” 51.

83.  “Supplementary material,” in Price et al., “Viking Warrior Women?” 21, https://static.cambridge.org/content/id/urn:cambridge.org:id:article:S0003598X18002582/resource/name/S0003598X18002582sup001.pdf.

84.  Robb, “Towards a Critical Ötziography,” 112.

85.  Melanie Piper, “Real Body, Fake Person: Recontextualizing Celebrity Bodies in Fandom and Film,” Transformative Works and Cultures 20 (2015), https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/664/542.

86.  Andreas Gunnarsson, Unleashing Science Popularization: Studies on Science as Popular Culture (Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg, 2012), 4.

87.  For an overview of academic and popular responses to the “female Viking warrior,” see archaeologist Howard Williams’s blog Archaeodeath, https://howardwilliamsblog.wordpress.com.

88.  Hedenstierna-Jonson et al., “Female Viking Warrior,” 855. The authors state that “a female warrior of this importance has never been determined.”

89.  Priscilla Wald, “Future Perfect: Grammar, Genes, and Geography,” New Literary History, 31, no. 4 (2000): 681.

90.  Jane E. Buikstra and Katelyn L. Bolhofer, “Bioarchaeologists Speak Out: An Introduction,” in Bioarchaeologists Speak Out: Deep Time Perspectives on Contemporary Issues, ed. Jane E. Buikstra (Cham: Springer, 2019), 2.

91.  In the second academic article, the researchers invoke “Occam’s razor” (also known as the principle of parsimony) as a rationale for rejecting other interpretations of the individual’s gender and social role, and for accentuating their own preferred interpretation as “the most obvious and logical conclusion.” See Price et al., “Viking Warrior Women?” 192.

92.  Persio, “Gender Reveal.”

93.  Hjalmar Stolpe, “Ett och annat om Björkö i Mälaren,” Ny Illustrerad Tidning, December 21, 1889.

94.  Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575–599; Sheila Jasanoff, “Technologies of Humility,” Nature 450, no. 7166 (2007): 33; Gero, “Honoring Ambiguity.”

7   Ancient DNA and the Politics of Ethnicity in Neo-Nationalist China

Magnus Fiskesjö

The imposition of conventional national, ethnic, or other labels as a way to classify human DNA data inevitably creates a dilemma for ancient DNA (aDNA) studies, for genetics generally, and for our understanding of history. Some scholars have discussed this problem, yet they often leave out the case of China entirely.¹ Some have proposed solutions such as the use of geographical terms that do not correspond to—and therefore can avoid getting mixed up with—today’s political entities.² In 2021, a group of scholars proposed a set of ethics rules for aDNA studies.³ However, they left out the issue of naming, perhaps not fully grasping the dangers involved, given that the manipulation of ethnicities in genetics is often heavily politicized, not least in authoritarian countries like China.

Frequently left out of these discussions around the labeling of populations in aDNA research is the fundamental point that while human biological differences and variations are real, it is we who splice the continuum of human difference and name entities as separate and distinct. This act of naming is a social act carried out in social context, and typically in a situation of power inequality.

While some form of classification for genetic data is necessary, the use of ethnonyms or similar names to categorize genetic clusters often creates the false impression of self-evident “natural” identities that seamlessly coincide with contemporary concepts, such as, for example, “China.”⁴ This problem is exacerbated today by the powerful trend toward embracing identities as the primary lens through which to see the world. The new nationalisms that grow out of this trend also influence researchers how to frame and narrate their research.