As this volume has shown, it is simultaneously true that the revolutionary nature of aDNA research for the reconstruction of prehistory has been overblown and that aDNA can contribute meaningfully to our understandings of the past. The contributors to this volume are largely not practitioners of aDNA research. The book is generally critical of aDNA research as it is currently practiced, even when the authors are primary producers of aDNA data. Nonetheless, the contributors herein engage with the field because, done carefully, slowly, with respect for ancestors, with respect for descendant communities, and with care for complexities of social science data, the discipline can contribute significantly to the work of prehistorians. Ancient DNA research will be greatly enriched if the scholars at the bench take seriously the work done by the authors of Critical Perspectives on Ancient DNA.
Notes
1. I strongly prefer “molecular anthropologist” over “anthropological geneticist” for the kinds of researchers I’m talking about because they are primarily anthropologists with a molecular toolkit rather than geneticists who happen to focus on humans. Thus, for a molecular anthropologist, anthropology is the core, not the modifier. My perspective on this point is not widely shared, and many researchers who earned PhDs in anthropology, hold positions in departments of anthropology, and address anthropological questions with molecular data call themselves anthropological geneticists.
2. Ancient DNA data can also be generated from paleontological remains that do not derive from archaeological contexts, but this volume focuses on archaeological contexts and questions.
3. See Carol E. Cleland, “Methodological and Epistemic Differences between Historical Science and Experimental Science,” Philosophy of Science 69, no. 3 (2002): 474–496.
4. See K. Ann Horsburgh, “Molecular Anthropology: The Judicial Use of Genetic Data in Archaeology,” Journal of Archaeological Science 56 (2015): 141–145.
5. David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), xx.
6. See Francis Collins and David Galas, “A New Five-Year Plan for the US Human Genome Project,” Science 262, no. 5130 (1993): 43–46.
7. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Exploring the Current Landscape of Consumer Genomics: Proceedings of a Workshop (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2020), 11.
8. See John J. Reedy, Thomas Szczes, and Thomas D. Downs, “Tongue Rolling among Twins,” Journal of Heredity 62, no. 2 (1971): 125–127; Nicholas G. Martin, “No Evidence for a Genetic Basis of Tongue Rolling or Hand Clasping,” Journal of Heredity 66, no. 3 (1975): 179–180; Taku Komai, “Notes on Lingual Gymnastics: Frequency of Tongue Rollers and Pedigrees of Tied Tongues in Japan,” Journal of Heredity 42, no. 6 (1951): 293–297; Alfred Henry Sturtevant, A History of Genetics (New York: Harper & Row, 1965). It is also worth noting that teaching genetics in this way, with fundamental errors in facts, is an effective way to lead high school and undergraduate students to suspect that their social father is not their biological father; a phenomenon we euphemize as a “nonpaternity event.” Regardless of what we call it, leading teenagers to doubt the identities of their biological fathers is a terrible thing to do to people, and it is an especially terrible thing to do based on bad biological information. For a discussion about this, see John McDonald, Myths of Human Genetics (Baltimore, MD: Sparky House, 2011).
9. See Marion E. Reid and Christine Lomas-Francis, The Blood Group Antigen FactsBook (New York: Elsevier Academic, 2004).
10. See Yoshiro Koda et al., “Missense Mutation of FUT1 and Deletion of FUT2 Are Responsible for Indian Bombay Phenotype of ABO Blood Group System,” Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications 238, no. 1 (1997): 21–25; R. J. Kelly et al., “Molecular Basis for H Blood Group Deficiency in Bombay (Oh) and Para-Bombay Individuals,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 91, no. 113 (1994): 5843–5847; Florence F. Wagner and Willy A. Flegel, “Polymorphism of the h Allele and the Population Frequency of Sporadic Nonfunctional Alleles,” Transfusion 37, no. 3 (1997): 284–290.
11. See Reid and Lomas-Francis, Blood Group Antigen FactsBook.
12. See Sheetal Malhotra et al., “Acute Hemolytic Transfusion Reaction in a Patient with Bombay Phenotype: Implications for ABO Grouping,” Indian Journal of Hematology and Blood Transfusion 30 (2014): 108–110.
13. See Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006).
14. See James DiFrisco and Johannes Jaeger, “Beyond Networks: Mechanism and Process in Evo-devo,” Biology and Philosophy 34 (2019): 1–24.
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