Reconciling material cultures in archaeology with genetic data: The nomenclature of clusters emerging from archaeogenomic analysis

Abstract

Genome-wide ancient DNA analysis of skeletons retrieved from archaeological excavations has provided a powerful new tool for the investigation of past populations and migrations. An important objective for the coming years is to properly integrate ancient genomics into archaeological research. This article aims to contribute to developing a better understanding and cooperation between the two disciplines and beyond. It focuses on the question of how best to name clusters encountered when analysing the genetic makeup of past human populations. Recent studies have frequently borrowed archaeological cultural designations to name these genetic groups, while neglecting the historically problematic nature of the concept of cultures in archaeology. After reviewing current practices in naming genetic clusters, we introduce three possible nomenclature systems (‘numeric system’, ‘mixed system (a)’, ‘geographic-temporal system’) along with their advantages and challenges.

Admixture has obscured signals of historical hard sweeps in humans

“…This classification process resulted in the assignment of 1,162 ancient human genomes into 18 unique populations (Table S1). We use a population nomenclature that follows the guidelines recently proposed for ancient DNA research (Eisenmann et al, 2018). Importantly, the shared ancestry and selection history of the populations in this study (Figures S1C-S1G) meant that the candidate sweeps were quite robust to different sampling choices for particular populations (Figures S3, S4; see Material and Methods section 4.5).…”

Who are we as historical beings? Shaping identities in light of the archaeogenetics ‘revolution’

“…There have also been a number of articles dealing with concerns regard ing terminology (Eisenmann et al 2018), ethics and protocols of sampling, or their lack thereof (Prendergast & Sawchuk 2018), or all of the above (see The SAA Archaeological Record (2019), especially the contributions of John Edward Terrell and John Hawks). Other analysis focused on the 'business like philosophy' that seems to frame the projects of several large research groups, such as those from Germany, Denmark or the USA (Jones 2019).…”

Ancient DNA from chewing gums connects material culture and genetics of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in Scandinavia

“…Writing human history using lines of evidence from both ancient DNA and archaeology, has been debated since the first DNA-sequence was recovered from human remains 1–3 . Central to this discussion is that ancient human skeletal material often comes from ritual contexts, many times without associated artefacts, and therefore lacks any clear connection to the material that archaeologists use to study the life of past societies.…”