The Social Effects of Archaeogenetics

If empirical aDNA studies now abound, less attention has been paid to the cultural, social, and political aspects of archaeogenetics. The enthusiasm over technological advancements and the possibilities for cost-effective and hitherto unfeasible large-scale analyses has left little room for thorough critical inquiries into the wider effects of archaeogenetic research.²⁵ For sure, in the past years we have seen a number of publications presenting recommendations and best practices for archaeogenetics, often calling for a more genuine engagement with descendant communities and improved “collaboration” between geneticists, archaeologists, and custodians of human remains.²⁶ Moreover, several scientists in the field have published opinion pieces requesting a more cautious handling of ancient human remains and a greater sensitivity toward groups affected by archaeogenetic research.²⁷ The basic intention of such texts—to facilitate a more ethically attuned and politically informed approach among scientists in the field—is certainly important. One hopes a better understanding of the interests of different stakeholders would engender more socially responsible practices.²⁸

Since most of these publications have been written by researchers with stakes in the current standing and future development of the field, however, they rarely address more profound epistemological, cultural, and political issues related to archaeogenetics. What happens to our understanding when archaeology and historical inquiries into the past are married to genetic science? How does the research field relate to earlier traditions of categorizing human subjects according to biological differences, and in what ways can it not only challenge but activate and reify ideas of identity, race, and nationality? What kinds of cultural or historical narratives are generated by archaeogenetics, and what sorts of politics might such narratives give rise to? How does the entanglement of research laboratories, popular media and funding agencies shape the production of archaeogenetic knowledge? And how does the genetic concept of “ancestry” promoted by archaeogenetics relate to nonbiological, much older, ideas of what it means to be related?

These are the kind of questions addressed in Critical Perspectives on Ancient DNA. A collection of essays written by renowned scholars in Europe and the United States, this book offers the first comprehensive and in-depth inquiry into the practices and effects of archaeogenetics. As a multidisciplinary venture, it features anthropologists, archaeologists, geneticists, media historians, cultural studies scholars, and researchers in science and technology studies. Although their objects of study and methodological approaches differ, all contributions come together in an effort to critically investigate how archaeogenetics appears in relation to, and in interaction with, society at large.

The Chapters

In the first chapter in this book, “Gained in Translation: Interdisciplinary Challenges in Ancient DNA,” geneticists Charlotte Mulcare and Mélanie Pruvost delve into one of the most discussed problems of archaeogenetics, namely the interdisciplinary collaboration between geneticists and archaeologists. The challenges stemming from interdisciplinarity have been discussed many times before, and improved collaboration between geneticists and archaeologists has often been proposed as the silver bullet to solve most problems identified in the field. Arising from profound personal experiences of working in research teams with scholars from the humanities, Mulcare and Pruvost take a slightly different approach to the problem of interdisciplinarity. Rather than glossing over the differences between geneticists and archaeologists, they emphasize the importance of acknowledging the fundamental epistemological distinctions between genomic science and disciplines in the humanities. While disparities in technical knowledge and language may lead to misunderstanding and tension, Mulcare and Pruvost argue that there is good reason to avoid rushing to immediate consensus. Instead, they encourage researchers in the field of archaeogenetics to sit with conflicts, acknowledge differences, and engage in acts of translation.

In “Diagrams of Human Genetic Kinship and Diversity: From the Tree to the Mosaic and the Network?,” cultural studies scholars Marianne Sommer and Ruth Amstutz home in on technologies of knowledge production and visualization in archaeogenetic research. By describing and comparing software programs employed for the statistical analyses of populations, as well as visual representations used to illustrate the resultant data, Sommer and Amstutz show that what may seem to be neutral or data-derived technologies are in fact creative, generating fundamentally different research results depending on choices made by programmers and researchers. Following the use of common visual metaphors such as the tree and the mosaic from early thinking on human evolution to current research on aDNA, they demonstrate how “tree thinking” lingers in software programs and how this legacy potentially reproduces notions about discrete and “pure” populations. Despite the persistent emphasis on “admixture” and “gene flow” between populations, Sommer and Amstutz argue that archaeogenetic research which rests on such technologies risks reproducing a tradition of scientific racism, to which it is often said to be antithetical.

In the third chapter, “Past Pathogens and Precarious Futures,” science and technology studies scholar Venla Oikkonen explores cultural representations of ancient pathogens in permafrost. In the face of thawing due to climate change, there has been an increasing anxiety surrounding the capacity of pathogens to come alive and cause life-threatening infections. Focusing on two cases—the anthrax outbreak in Siberia 2016, and the reconstruction of the 1918 pandemic influenza virus—Oikkonen teases out the cultural imaginations and political narratives that take shape around these ancient pathogens. It is not only the past that matters when we deal with aDNA, she argues, but also the future. As Oikkonen’s two cases demonstrate, the relations between past, present, and future engendered by aDNA are ambivalent, as it both threatens and promises future life.

In the fourth chapter, “Twisting Strings: Hopi Ancestors and Ancient DNA,” Hopi tribe member Stewart B. Koyiyumptewa and anthropologist Chip Colwell discuss the problems inherent in uses of the concept of ancestry in archaeogenetics. Juxtaposing the strictly biological definition of ancestry in genetic science with Hopi notions of ancestry—conceived as a complex tapestry including humans and nonhumans, material objects, sites, and historical events—Koyiyumptewa and Colwell highlight the limitations of genetics in analyses of social identity. For archaeogeneticists to make valid contributions about cultures that do not share their specific concept of ancestry, they will have to adapt to other, extragenetical, definitions of what it means to be related. Reviewing the encounter between Indigenous tribes and archaeogenetics, the chapter points to an urgent need for a profound form of collaboration that does not merely aim to persuade Indigenous people to provide DNA samples for archaeogeneticists’ databases but is also open to negotiation of key concepts in archaeogenetics.

In “Whitewashing the Neanderthal: Doing Time with Ancient DNA,” anthropologist Amade M’charek scrutinizes cultural meaning making around concepts of race and identity by examining the influence of archaeogenetics on popular imaginations of the Neanderthal. If Neanderthals used to be depicted as brutal, dumb, dark-skinned, and apelike creatures, recent archaeogenomic research showing that Neanderthals interbred with Homo sapiens sapiens has engendered new representations of the Neanderthal as akin to the modern white European man, sporting business suits and talking on cell phones. This genre of representation, M’charek notes, inserts the Neanderthal as an object into a single story of origin where the European subject poses at the end as the crown of evolution. Weaving together personal memories and fieldnotes from her anthropological work in a leading lab working with Neanderthal DNA, along with close readings of museum displays and popular images of Neanderthals, she calls attention to the dangers of using aDNA to create a single story of evolution—in this case featuring a whitewashed version of the Neanderthal—with significance for racial politics in Europe and other parts of the world.

The relations between aDNA and popular culture are further explored in media historian Andreas Nyblom’s chapter “The Lagertha Complex: Archaeogenomics and the Viking Stage.” Presenting a close reading of the story about the “female Viking warrior”—a global media celebrity born out of a 2017 analysis of ancient human remains excavated from a Viking Age site in Sweden—Nyblom carefully unpacks the construction of individual identity based on aDNA. Contrary to the idea, promoted by the researchers and communicators, that the complex social identity of this individual from a thousand years ago was determined or “confirmed” by genomics, Nyblom demonstrates how the persona of the “female Viking warrior” was in fact constructed in convoluted interactions between archaeologists, academic journals, popular culture, news outlets, and social media. The main contribution of DNA to the story about the “female Viking warrior” was not analytical, Nyblom argues, but metaphorical. More than anything else, DNA was used as a sign of indisputable proof, stamped on creative interpretations inspired by archaeological findings, ancient mythology, and contemporary fiction.

In the final chapter, “Ancient DNA and the Politics of Ethnicity in Neo-Nationalist China,” anthropologist Magnus Fiskesjö offers a unique insight into the political potentials of aDNA. With historical overviews and current descriptions of the concept of ethnicity in national politics in China, Fiskesjö demonstrates how “the power of naming” in genetic mappings of past and present populations becomes complicit in political violations of human rights in contemporary China. He unfolds a deliberate political effort to establish the ethnic Han group as the deep-rooted origin of the Chinese nation, with subsequent programs of forced assimilation and erasure of targeted ethnic minorities. Official actors—from high-profile Chinese geneticists to president Xi Jinping himself—have emphasized the importance of DNA in this political pursuit. International researchers engaging in archaeogenetic research on Chinese material, Fiskesjö argues, often lack the cultural competence to understand the broader consequences of their research. As a warning example, the case of China points to the inherent potential of archaeogenetics to serve political ambitions with severe consequences.

In a concluding commentary arising from her own experiences of working with ancient DNA, molecular anthropologist K. Ann Horsburgh demonstrates how genetic data can become meaningful only by being articulated to other kinds of data, such as social and historical context. For the future of archaeogenetics, she makes a plea for broader interdisciplinary collaborations that can close the door to “molecular chauvinism,” in which genetic data are regarded as pure and privileged, and instead open up for a genuine appreciation of the epistemological complexity of aDNA studies. It will, Horsburgh implies, require a profound critical reflection that includes a halt in the hunt for flashy press releases, an engagement with Indigenous and descendant communities throughout the research processes, and a “recalibration of [the field’s] core mission and its core values.”

Critical Perspectives on Ancient DNA

As the title of this volume makes clear, these chapters offer critical perspectives on ancient DNA. But what exactly is the critique? What is meant by a genuinely critical perspective on archaeogenetics?

As noted above, the public perception of DNA has long tended to be characterized by the idea that our genes offer a source of absolute truth about who we “really” are. With aDNA, this idea has been projected onto the past. Researchers involved in archaeogenetic research have famously portrayed their enterprise as a “door to the past,” or a means for attaining indisputable evidence of what actually happened in prehistoric times.²⁹ In a classic quote, Oxford geneticist and popular science personality Bryan Sykes has claimed that “our DNA does not fade like an ancient parchment; it does not rust in the ground like the sword of a warrior long dead.… It is the traveler from an antique land who lives within us all.”³⁰

From this point of view, DNA is a passive artifact of the past, just waiting to be uncovered by cutting-edge scientists. It is not, however, an accurate description of archaeogenetics. The compositions of DNA molecules in our genomes are indeed inherited as more or less randomly recombined versions of the molecular compositions in the genomes of our ancestors. But the molecules are our own. And molecules do not speak. To make meaning out of what is fundamentally a meaningless substance, scientists and others who create and communicate stories about aDNA have to use words, names, labels, categories, statistical models, and images. These discursive components do not emerge naturally and neutrally out of the DNA molecules. Instead, they are the product of culturally informed techniques of meaning making. Not only do they hinge on specific historical contexts and existing discourses, they also have social and political effects that extend beyond the sphere of genetic science itself.³¹

The chapters in this volume can be seen as a critique of the notion of aDNA as a petrified historical source that can be neutrally and objectively unveiled by genetic analysis. Rather than approaching DNA in this way, the chapters investigate the meaning-making techniques of archaeogenetics and explore how these are anchored both in the history of the research field itself and in cultural discourses pertaining to other parts of society. Here, we find reason to recall some of the debates that surrounded the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) in the 1990s. Fronted by Stanford geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, and setting out to survey and map genetic relations between groups of people in order to reveal “who we are as a species and how we came to be,”³² the HGDP was caught between an outspoken antiracist ethos and allegations of biocolonialism, biopiracy, and racialist exploitation.³³ After fierce debates that went on for years, the project was officially discontinued in 1997 when funding agents withdrew support. But the HGDP inspired new grand-scale endeavors with similar aims and ambitions, such as the Genographic and HapMap projects. Its legacy still lingers in current aDNA research—in terms of both methodology and ambition.³⁴

In an influential study of the HGDP debate, sociologist Jenny Reardon argues that our understanding of the HGDP has been obscured by a flawed Enlightenment-based image of science as essentially pure and separate from politics.³⁵ This figure of purity was at the heart of the idea that the HGDP would be an antidote to racism, just by providing scientific facts about complicated genetic relations. When critics pointed out that the principles of sampling and the structures of the analytical models used to sort out and “map” genetic diversity actually reinforced old and murky ideas of primitivity and essential identity, proponents of the HGDP struggled to take it in. Taking refuge in the idea of a pure science, they were adamant that their project could not be contributing to racism, because of its high-quality scientific foundation. Any dangerous or unethical effects of the project must, according to this mindset, be due to “misuse” or popular misunderstandings of science.

As Reardon and others have demonstrated with much clarity, however, this is not a sustainable understanding of scientific practice, which in reality is always entangled in the society that it is part of.³⁶ In the words of science and technology studies scholar Kim TallBear, the molecular sequences that genetics draw on are not “simply uncovered in human genomes,” but “conceived in ways shaped by key historical events and influential narratives.”³⁷ As a meaning-making practice, archaeogenetics does not only intersect with prevailing cultural discourses about history, identity, and belonging, as becomes clear in Amade M’charek’s chapter on the recent whitewashing of the Neanderthal. It also takes shape within prevailing power structures, such as those legacies of colonialism that inform the encounter between geneticists and Indigenous groups discussed in Stewart B. Koyiyumptewa and Chip Colwell’s chapter. Whatever social or political consequences archaeogenetics might have, these cannot be seen as the unfortunate result of a “misuse” of science, sloppy media accounts, or mistakes by bold and attention-seeking researchers. As the essays in this volume make clear, they ultimately stem from the science itself.

This point is perhaps made most clearly in Marianne Sommer and Ruth Amstutz’s chapter, which explores how archaeogenetics—and population genetics more broadly—is based on visual representations that render humanity as divided into discreet, separate “populations.” In spite of the recurring insistence that research on aDNA undermines racism by demonstrating that human history has always been characterized by “admixture” between different groups, the very idea of “admixture” is, in fact, based on the notion of purity.³⁸ As Sommer and Amstutz suggest, archaeogenetics tends to reproduce notions about humanity as divided into different “races.” Thus, while the political transgressions legitimized by aDNA that Magnus Fiskesjö discusses in his chapter are of course perpetrated by actors outside the realm of archaeogenetics itself, the very employment of aDNA to separate groups from each other is fully in line with the logic of a research field that, as we have noted elsewhere, is based on a methodology of differentiation.³⁹ As Fiskesjö’s chapter demonstrates, it is not possible to make a clear distinction between geneticists who create such differentiations and political actors who put them to work. Indeed, as Andreas Nyblom shows in his chapter on the worldwide commotion around the “female Viking warrior,” archaeogenetics is not an insulated, sealed-off laboratory enterprise, but a complex ecosystem in which geneticists and archaeologists operate alongside communicators, journalists, and actors in popular culture and the entertainment business. This ecosystem interconnects university departments, funding agencies, media actors, cultural institutions, and political movements.

All of this shows that the idea of a boundary between archaeogenetics and society cannot be upheld. If it could, aDNA research would not generate the immense public interest that we have seen during the past decade. It would not make any headlines, receive massive funding, or be awarded any Nobel Prizes. But archaeogenetics has always been a high-profile research field thriving by the attention from the public. Unlike most academic disciplines, it has repercussions far beyond the university. Not only does it have the power to unsettle the past and unleash political energies whose consequences it cannot control; not only can it untie groups from their histories and provoke conflicts about land, rights, and identities; as Venla Oikkonen argues in her chapter on the threats and promises of pathogens in the thawing permafrost, it has the capacity to alter our very perception of the future.

Rather than taking the claims of archaeogenetics at face value and submitting to the idea that ancient DNA holds the key to absolute historical truths, it is time that we subject this research field to critical scrutiny.

Notes

1.  We want to thank our coeditor, Charlotte Mulcare, as well as Andreas Nyblom and two anonymous reviewers for their critical reading and important inputs to this introduction.

2.  For a historic overview of the study of DNA, including the drama surrounding the double helix, which also included scientist Rosalind Franklin, see Siddharta Mukherjee, The Gene: An Intimate History (New York: Scribner, 2016).

3.  Dorothy Nelkin and M. Susan Lindee, The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004).

4.  K. Ann Horsburgh, “Molecular Anthropology: The Judicial Use of Genetic Data in Archaeology,” Journal of Archaeological Science 56 (2015): 142.

5.  Some examples are Mark Thomas, “To Claim Someone Has ‘Viking Ancestors’ Is No Better than Astrology,” The Guardian, February 25, 2013; “Debunking Genetic Astrology,” University College London, accessed December 19, 2021, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/biosciences/gee/molecular-and-cultural-evolution-lab/debunking-genetic-astrology; Jennifer Raff, “Genetic Astrology: When Ancient DNA Meets Ancestry Testing,” Forbes, April 9, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferraff/2019/04/09/genetic-astrology-when-ancient-dna-meets-ancestry-testing.

6.  See also Nelkin and Lindee, DNA Mystique; Judith Roof, The Poetics of DNA (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007); Josie Gill, Biofiction: Race, Genetics and the Contemporary Novel (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).

7.  Russell Higuchi et al., “DNA Sequences from the Quagga, an Extinct Member of the Horse Family,” Nature 312, no. 5991 (1984): 282–284.

8.  Svante Pääbo, John A. Gifford, and Allan C. Wilson, “Mitochondrial DNA Sequences from a 7000-Year Old Brain,” Nucleid Acids Research 16, no. 20 (1988): 9775–9887; Erika Hagelberg, Bryan Sykes, and Robert Hedges, “Ancient Bone DNA Amplified,” Nature 342, no. 6249 (1989): 485; Edward M. Golenberg et al., “Chloroplast DNA Sequence from a Miocene Magnolia Species,” Nature 344, no. 6267 (1990): 656–658; Raúl J. Cano et al., “Amplification and Sequencing of DNA from a 120–135-Million-Year-Old Weevil,” Nature 363, no. 6429 (1993): 536–538.

9.  Erika Hagelberg and John Brian Clegg, “Genetic Polymorphisms in Prehistoric Pacific Islanders Determined by Analysis of Ancient Bone DNA,” Proceedings: Biological Sciences 252, no. 1334 (1993): 163–170; Anne C. Stone and Mark Stoneking, “Ancient DNA from a Pre-Columbian Amerindan Population,” American Journal of Social Anthropology 92, no. 4 (1993): 463–471; Oliva Handt et al., “Molecular Genetic Analysis of the Tyrolean Ice Man,” Science 264, no. 5166 (1994): 1775–1778.

10.  Matthias Krings et al., “Neandertal DNA Sequences and the Origins of Modern Humans,” Cell 90, no. 1 (1997): 19–30.

11.  See, for example, Frederika A. Kaestle and K. Ann Horsburgh, “Ancient DNA in Anthropology: Methods, Applications, and Ethics,” Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 119 (2002): 92–130; Mark Pluciennik, “Clash of Cultures? Archaeology and Genetics,” Documenta Praehistorica 33 (2006): 39–49.

12.  This technology is also known as second-generation sequencing or high-throughput sequencing.

13.  Liisa Loog and Greger Larsen, “Ancient DNA,” in Archaeological Science, ed. Michael P. Richards and Kate Britton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 13–34; Ludovic Orlando et al., “Ancient DNA Analysis,” Nature Reviews Methods Primers 1 (2021): 1–26. Despite portrayals in the media, whole-genome sequencing does not necessarily mean that an individual’s entire genome is sequenced. What it means is that areas across the whole genome are targeted.

14.  Archaeogenomics is also known as paleogenomics. In this text, however, we use the more comprehensive term “archaeogenetics.”

15.  Morten Rasmusen et al., “Ancient Human Genome Sequence of an Extinct Palaeo-Eskimo,” Nature 463, no. 7282 (2010): 757–762; Johannes Krause et al., “The Complete Mitochondrial DNA Genome of an Unknown Hominin from Southern Siberia,” Nature 464, no. 7290 (2010): 894–897.

16.  Richard Ed Green et al., “A Draft Sequence of the Neanderthal Genome,” Science 328, no. 5979 (2010): 710–722.

17.  Ewen Callaway, “Divided by DNA: The Uneasy Relationship between Archaeology and Ancient Genomics,” Nature 555, no. 7698 (2018): 573–576.

18.  For a discussion about the “hype” around ancient DNA studies, see Elizabeth D. Jones and Elsbeth Bösl, “Ancient Human DNA: A History of Hype (Then and Now),” Journal of Social Archaeology 21, no. 2 (2021): 236–255.

19.  Joyce C. Havstad, “Sensational Science, Archaic Hominin Genetics, and Amplified Inductive Risk,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 52, no. 3 (2022): 311.

20.  See, for instance, Kristian Kristiansen, “Towards a New Paradigm? The Third Science Revolution and its Possible Consequences in Archaeology,” Current Swedish Archaeology 22, no. 1 (2014): 11–34; Rebecca Redfern and Margaret Clegg, “Archaeologically Derived Human Remains in England: Legacy and Future,” World Archaeology 49, no. 5 (2017): 574–587; Theresa L. Cole and Jamie R. Wood, “The Ancient DNA Revolution: The Latest Era in Unearthing New Zealand’s Faunal History,” New Zealand Journal of Zoology 45, no 2. (2018): 91–120; Mary E. Prendergast and Elizabeth Sawchuk, “Boots on the Ground in Africa’s Ancient DNA ‘Revolution’: Archaeological Perspectives on Ethics and Best Practices,” Antiquity 92, no. 363 (2018): 803–815; Pontus Skoglund and Iain Mathieson, “Ancient Genomics of Modern Humans: The First Decade,” Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics 19 (2018): 381–404; 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); Matthew Piscitelli, “Bones and Chromosomes: The Ancient DNA Revolution in Archaeology (Part 1),” SAA Archaeological Record 19, no. 1 (2019): 15–17; Éadaoin Harney, “Exploring the Human Past during the Ancient DNA Revolution,” PhD diss., Harvard University, 2020; Logan Kistler et al., “Ancient Plant Genomics in Archaeology, Herbaria, and the Environment,” Annual Review of Plant Biology 71 (2020): 605–629.

21.  For academic contexts where the revolution trope has been reproduced, see Brown University’s 2019 conference “The Ancient DNA Revolution in Archaeology” and the seminar in 2022 by Norway’s National Committee for Research Ethics on Human Remains, “aDNA Research and Research Integrity.” For popular science and news media, see, for instance, Robin McKie, “How a DNA Revolution Has Decoded the Origins of Our Humanity,” The Observer, November 19, 2018; Jeffrey Brown, “This Ancient DNA Revolution is Unlocking Just How Interconnected We Are,” PBS.com, June 6, 2018, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-ancient-dna-revolution-unlocks-how-connected-we-all-are; Noam Hassenfeld and Byrd Pinkerton, “A Scientist on the Great Responsibility of Using Ancient DNA to Rewrite Human History,” Vox, March 24, 2021, https://www.vox.com/22256790/ancient-dna-archaeology-ethics-podcast-unexplainable.

22.  Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 111.

23.  Reich, Who We Are, xix.

24.  Reich, Who We Are, xviii.

25.  For some notable exceptions and critical academic accounts of human archaeogenetic studies, see Elisabeth Niklasson, “Shutting the Stable Door after the Horse Has Bolted: Critical Thinking and the Third Science Revolution,” Current Swedish Archaeology 22, no. 1 (2014): 57–63; Horsburgh, “Molecular Anthropology”; Martin Furholt, “Massive Migrations? The Impact of Recent aDNA Studies on Our View of the Third Millennium Europe,” European Journal of Archaeology 21, no. 2 (2018): 159–191; Christoph Sand, commentary in forum “Ancient DNA and its Contribution to Understanding the Human History of the Pacific Islands,” Archaeology in Oceania 53, no. 3 (2018): 214–215; Susanne E. Hakenbeck, “Genetics, Archaeology and the Far Right: An Unholy Trinity,” World Archaeology 51, no. 4 (2019): 517–527; Alexandra Ion, “Who Are We as Historical Beings? Shaping Identities in Light of the Archaeogenetics ‘Revolution,’ ” Current Swedish Archaeology 27, no. 1 (2019): 11–36; Anna Källén et al., “Archaeogenetics in Popular Media: Contemporary Implications of Ancient DNA,” Current Swedish Archaeology 27, no. 1 (2019): 69–91; Michael L. Blakey, “On the Biodeterministic Imagination,” Archaeological Dialogues 27, no. 1 (2020): 1–16; Anna Källén et al., “Introduction: Transcending the aDNA Revolution,” Journal of Social Archaeology 21, no. 2 (2021): 149–156; Amanda Daniela Cortez et al., “An Ethical Crisis in Ancient DNA Research: Insights from the Chaco Canyon Controversy as a Case Study,” Journal of Social Archaeology 21, no. 2 (2021); John Hawks, “Accurate Depiction of Uncertainty in Ancient DNA Research: The Case of Neandertal Ancestry in Africa,” Journal of Social Archaeology 21, no. 2 (2021): 157–178; Judith Jesch, “Haplotypes and Textual Types: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Viking Age Migration and Mobility,” Journal of Social Archaeology 21, no. 2 (2021): 216–235; Jones and Bösl, “Ancient Human DNA”; Venla Oikkonen, “Conceptualizing Histories of Multispecies Entanglements: Ancient Pathogen Genomics and the Case of Borrelia recurrentis,” Journal of Social Archaeology 21, no. 2 (2021): 197–215; Havstad, “Sensational Science”; Anna Källén et al., “Petrous Fever: The Gap Between Ideal and Actual Practice in Ancient DNA Research,” Current Anthropology (forthcoming). For critical accounts in nonscholarly publications, see Chip Colwell, “Rights of the Dead and the Living Clash when Scientists Extract DNA from Human Remains,” The Conversation, April 6, 2018, https://theconversation.com/rights-of-the-dead-and-the-living-clash-when-scientists-extract-dna-from-human-remains-94284; Gideon Lewis-Kraus, “Is Ancient DNA Research Revealing New Truths—or Falling into Old Traps?” New York Times Magazine, January 17, 2019; Daniel Strand, “0.01%: Genetics, Race and the Methodology of Differentiation,” Eurozine, January 4, 2021, https://www.eurozine.com/0-01.

26.  See, for instance, Prendergast and Sawchuk, “Boots on the Ground”; Kirsty Squires, David Errickson, and Nicholas Márquez-Grant, ed., Ethical Approaches to Human Remains: A Global Challenge in Bioarchaeology and Forensic Anthropology (Cham: Springer, 2019); Kendra A. Sirak and Jakob W. Sedig, “Balancing Analytical Goals and Anthropological Stewardship in the Midst of the Paleogenomics Revolution,” World Archaeology 51, no. 4 (2019): 560–573; Jennifer K. Wagner et al., “Fostering Responsible Research on Ancient DNA,” American Journal of Human Genetics 107, no. 2 (2020): 183–195; Songül Alpaslan-Roodenberg et al., “Ethics of DNA Research on Human Remains: Five Globally Applicable Guidelines,” Nature 599, no. 7883 (2021): 41–46. For a critique of this best-practices genre in archaeogenetics, see Krystal S. Tsosie et al., “Ancient-DNA Researchers Write Their Own Rules,” Nature 600, no. 7887 (2021): 37.