Archaeogenetics in Popular Media: Contemporary Implications of Ancient DNA

Källén, Anna; Mulcare, Charlotte; Nyblom, Andreas; Strand, Daniel

doi:10.37718/csa.2019.04

Cited by 10 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Furholt, for example, articulated the concern this way: “[…] [I]t is disconcerting that many of the narratives put forward, especially in the popular media […], convey the impression that we as archaeologists would support a view of prehistory that is made up of closed ethnic groups of people, defined by a uniform and differential culture and biology, who fight each other, extinguish each other and take each other’s women […]” (2020). Archaeologist Anna Källén and colleagues noted similar patterns in their analysis of the Birka “warrior” in that the scientific research article was communicated to the public by drawing on popular narratives and current political debates (Hedenstierna-Jonson et al., 2017; Källén et al., 2019; Price et al., 2019). Likewise, others demonstrated how aDNA research on population migration across Europe has been exploited by far-right groups with racist, nationalistic, and political agendas (Lidén and Eriksson, 2013; Frieman and Hofmann, 2019).…”

Section: High Stakes: Disciplinary Debates and Public Understanding Of Human Historymentioning

confidence: 88%

Ancient human DNA: A history of hype (then and now)

Jones

Bösl

2021

Journal of Social Archaeology

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In this article on the history of ancient DNA research, we argue that the innovation of next-generation sequencing (NGS) of the early 2000s has ushered in a second hype cycle much like the first hype cycle the field experienced in the 1990s with the advent of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). While the first hype cycle centered around the search for the oldest DNA, the field’s current optimism today promotes the rhetoric of revolution surrounding the study of ancient human gnomes. This is evidenced from written sources and personal interviews with researchers who feel the vast amount of data, the conclusions being made from this data, and the ever-increasing celebrity status of the field are perhaps moving too fast for their own good. Here, we use the concept of contamination, in both a literal and figurative understanding of the term, to explore the field’s continuities and disparities. We also argue that a number of additional, figurative interpretations of “contamination” are useful for navigating the current debate between geneticists and archaeologists regarding the origin, evolution, and migration of ancient humans across space and time. Our historical outlook on aDNA’s disciplinary development, we suggest, is necessary to accurately appreciate the state of the field, how it came to be, and where it might go in the future.

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Section: High Stakes: Disciplinary Debates and Public Understanding Of Human Historymentioning

confidence: 88%

Ancient human DNA: A history of hype (then and now)

Jones

Bösl

2021

Journal of Social Archaeology

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“…The results therefore need to be integrated with other classes of evidence (Jesch 2021, 226). However, narratives of sudden and sweeping population change have proved particularly attractive to the popular media (Jones & Bösl 2021, 246; Kallén et al 2019, 72), who are sometimes given to reporting such findings in a lurid and sensationalist fashion (e.g. Pinkstone 2019).…”

Section: Migrants and Nativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neolithization and Population Replacement in Britain: An Alternative View

Thomas¹

2022

CAJ

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Investigation of British Mesolithic and Neolithic genomes suggests discontinuity between the two and has been interpreted as indicating a significant migration of continental farmers, displacing the indigenous population. These incomers had already acquired some hunter-gatherer genetic heritage before their arrival, and this increased little in Britain. However, the proportion of hunter-gatherer genetic ancestry in British Neolithic genomes is generally greater than for most contemporary examples on the continent, particularly in emerging evidence from northern France, while the ultimate origin of British Neolithic populations in Iberia is open to question. Both the date calculated for the arrival of new people in Britain and their westerly origin are at odds with other aspects of the existing evidence. Here, a two-phase model of Neolithization is proposed. The first appearance of Neolithic things and practices significantly predated a more substantial transfer of population, creating the conditions under which new communities could be brought into being. The rather later establishment of a major migration stream coincided with an acceleration in the spread of Neolithic artefacts and activities, as well as an enrichment of the Neolithic material assemblage.

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“…In short, it demands a stronger public engagement by archaeologists, scientists, and humanists, perhaps to a degree we are not used to. Therefore, we need to engage in the ways new results are disseminated in the public domain (Källen et al 2019), whether by writing popular books and articles or by engaging with science journalists, as their articles reach a wide readership. The past has always been exploited for political purposes, for good and ill (Díaz-Andreu 2007).…”

Section: The Danger Of Ideological Misrepresentationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Archaeology and the Genetic Revolution in European Prehistory

Kristiansen

2022

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This Element was written to meet the theoretical and methodological challenge raised by the third science revolution and its implications for how to study and interpret European prehistory. The first section is therefore devoted to a historical and theoretical discussion of how to practice interdisciplinarity in this new age, and following from that, how to define some crucial, but undertheorized categories, such as culture, ethnicity and various forms of migration. The author thus integrates the new results from archaeogenetics into an archaeological frame of reference, to produce a new and theoretically informed historical narrative, one that also invites debate, but also one that identifies areas of uncertainty, where more research is needed.

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Archaeogenetics in Popular Media: Contemporary Implications of Ancient DNA

Cited by 10 publications

References 32 publications

Ancient human DNA: A history of hype (then and now)

Ancient human DNA: A history of hype (then and now)

Neolithization and Population Replacement in Britain: An Alternative View

Archaeology and the Genetic Revolution in European Prehistory

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