The importance of fine-scale studies for integrating paleogenomics and archaeology
- PMID: 30081254
- DOI: 10.1016/j.gde.2018.07.007
The importance of fine-scale studies for integrating paleogenomics and archaeology
Abstract
There has been an undercurrent of intellectual tension between geneticists studying human population history and archaeologists for almost 40 years. The rapid development of paleogenomics, with geneticists working on the very material discovered by archaeologists, appears to have recently heightened this tension. The relationship between these two fields thus far has largely been of a multidisciplinary nature, with archaeologists providing the raw materials for sequencing, as well as a scaffold of hypotheses based on interpretation of archaeological cultures from which the geneticists can ground their inferences from the genomic data. Much of this work has taken place in the context of western Eurasia, which is acting as testing ground for the interaction between the disciplines. Perhaps the major finding has not been any particular historical episode, but rather the apparent pervasiveness of migration events, some apparently of substantial scale, over the past ∼5000 years, challenging the prevailing view of archaeology that largely dismissed migration as a driving force of cultural change in the 1960s. However, while the genetic evidence for `migration' is generally statistically sound, the description of these events as structured behaviours is lacking, which, coupled with often over simplistic archaeological definitions, prevents the use of this information by archaeologists for studying the social processes they are interested in. In order to integrate paleogenomics and archaeology in a truly interdisciplinary manner, it will be necessary to focus less on grand narratives over space and time, and instead integrate genomic data with other form of archaeological information at the level of individual communities to understand the internal social dynamics, which can then be connected amongst communities to model migration at a regional level. A smattering of recent studies have begun to follow this approach, resulting in inferences that are not only helping ask questions that are currently relevant to archaeologists, but also potentially opening up new avenues of research.
Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Similar articles
-
Paleogenomics of the prehistory of Europe: human migrations, domestication and disease.Ann Hum Biol. 2021 May;48(3):179-190. doi: 10.1080/03014460.2021.1942205. Ann Hum Biol. 2021. PMID: 34459342 Review.
-
Ancient Plant Genomics in Archaeology, Herbaria, and the Environment.Annu Rev Plant Biol. 2020 Apr 29;71:605-629. doi: 10.1146/annurev-arplant-081519-035837. Epub 2020 Mar 2. Annu Rev Plant Biol. 2020. PMID: 32119793 Review.
-
Ancient genomic research - From broad strokes to nuanced reconstructions of the past.J Anthropol Sci. 2022 Dec 30;100:193-230. doi: 10.4436/JASS.10017. J Anthropol Sci. 2022. PMID: 36576953 Review.
-
Understanding 6th-century barbarian social organization and migration through paleogenomics.Nat Commun. 2018 Sep 11;9(1):3547. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-06024-4. Nat Commun. 2018. PMID: 30206220 Free PMC article.
-
Ancient and modern genomics of the Ohlone Indigenous population of California.Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022 Mar 29;119(13):e2111533119. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2111533119. Epub 2022 Mar 21. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022. PMID: 35312358 Free PMC article.
Cited by
-
Ancestry and kinship in a Late Antiquity-Early Middle Ages cemetery in the Eastern Italian Alps.iScience. 2023 Oct 14;26(11):108215. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.108215. eCollection 2023 Nov 17. iScience. 2023. PMID: 37953960 Free PMC article.
-
Simulated patterns of mitochondrial diversity are consistent with partial population turnover in Bronze Age Central Europe.Am J Biol Anthropol. 2022 Jan;177(1):134-146. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.24431. Epub 2021 Nov 2. Am J Biol Anthropol. 2022. PMID: 36787792 Free PMC article.
-
Spatially explicit paleogenomic simulations support cohabitation with limited admixture between Bronze Age Central European populations.Commun Biol. 2021 Oct 7;4(1):1163. doi: 10.1038/s42003-021-02670-5. Commun Biol. 2021. PMID: 34621003 Free PMC article.
-
How a Paleogenomic Approach Can Provide Details on Bioarchaeological Reconstruction: A Case Study from the Globular Amphorae Culture.Genes (Basel). 2021 Jun 11;12(6):910. doi: 10.3390/genes12060910. Genes (Basel). 2021. PMID: 34208224 Free PMC article.
-
Integration of ancient DNA with transdisciplinary dataset finds strong support for Inca resettlement in the south Peruvian coast.Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020 Aug 4;117(31):18359-18368. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2005965117. Epub 2020 Jul 13. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020. PMID: 32661160 Free PMC article.
Publication types
MeSH terms
Substances
LinkOut - more resources
Full Text Sources
Other Literature Sources
Miscellaneous