Entanglements of Time, Temperature, Technology, and Place in Ancient DNA Research: The Case of the Denisovan Hominin

Abstract

The study of ancient DNA (aDNA) has gained increasing attention in science and society as a tool for tracing hominin evolution. While aDNA research overlaps with the history of population genetics, it embodies a specific configuration of technology, temporality, temperature, and place that, this article suggests, cannot be fully unpacked with existing science and technology studies approaches to population genetics. This article explores this configuration through the 2010 discovery of the Denisovan hominin based on aDNA retrieved from a finger bone and tooth in Siberia. The analysis explores how the Denisovan was enacted as a technoscientific object through the cool and even temperatures of Denisova Cave, assumptions about the connection between individual and population, the status of populations as evolutionary entities, and underlying colonialist and imperialist imaginaries of Siberia and Melanesia. The analysis sheds light on how aDNA research is changing the parameters within which evolutionary history is imagined and conceptualized. Through the case study, it also outlines some ways in which the specific technoscientific and cultural entanglements of aDNA can be critically explored.

Conceptualizing histories of multispecies entanglements: Ancient pathogen genomics and the case of Borrelia recurrentis

“…The comparison also located material differences between the modern "African" sequences and the medieval "European" sequence, which offered a basis on which the evolution of B. recurrentis into separate lineages over centuries and across space could be sketched. Crucially, this enactment of differences between old and new geographically situated pathogen strains echoes the organizing logics of aDNA research, in which ancient and modern samples, such as sequences from early hominins and modern humans, are compared in order to produce evolutionary histories (Ermini et al, 2015;Llamas et al, 2017;Oikkonen, 2019). In this framework, ancient pathogen knowledge (like all aDNA knowledge) is understood to be material in the sense that it is discoverable in the remains at the archaeological site.…”

“…In this framework, ancient pathogen knowledge (like all aDNA knowledge) is understood to be material in the sense that it is discoverable in the remains at the archaeological site. At the same time, it is also digital in the sense that it accrues meaning through its life in the genomic database and its comparison to other sequences (Oikkonen, 2019; Turner, 2007).…”

“…Surrounded by considerable excitement both within the biosciences and in cultural discourse, aDNA studies have engendered analyses of increasingly old specimens, such as prehistoric hominins and extinct animal species (Cappellini et al., 2018; Ermini et al., 2015; Llamas et al., 2017). Cultural fascination with aDNA has shaped popular imaginaries of evolution as well as reinforced assumptions of epistemic authority assigned to genetic knowledge in society (Turner, 2007; Oikkonen, 2019). Second, our relationship to bacteria and viruses has become an object of growing biomedical and political interest through the rise of antimicrobial resistance (Brown and Nettleton, 2017; Landecker, 2015) as well as emerging infectious diseases (Caduff, 2015; Lakoff, 2017; Porter, 2019).…”

From Fossil To Fact : The Denisova Discovery as Science in Action

“…political theorist Kennan Ferguson discusses the boundaries of the human and non-human categories and their respective conditions to participate in politics, paying special attention to the Denisovan's recent inclusion in the human family tree (Ferguson 2013). As I have mentioned earlier, STS and feminist technoscience scholar Venla Oikkonen has studied the Denisovan in the article "Entanglements of Time, Temperature, Technology, and Place in Ancient DNA Research: The Case of the Denisovan Hominin", published in Science, Technology, & Human Values (Oikkonen 2020). In the article, Oikkonen describes how the Denisovan was made through "technoscientific practices and material circumstances" and came together as an entanglement of time, temperature, technology and place (Oikkonen 2020(Oikkonen :1122.…”

“…As I have mentioned earlier, STS and feminist technoscience scholar Venla Oikkonen has studied the Denisovan in the article "Entanglements of Time, Temperature, Technology, and Place in Ancient DNA Research: The Case of the Denisovan Hominin", published in Science, Technology, & Human Values (Oikkonen 2020). In the article, Oikkonen describes how the Denisovan was made through "technoscientific practices and material circumstances" and came together as an entanglement of time, temperature, technology and place (Oikkonen 2020(Oikkonen :1122. Oikkonen also argues that the Denisova case shows how complex aDNA discoveries can be, and stresses a need for new tools to critically engage with aDNA (Oikkonen 2020(Oikkonen :1136.…”