What Have Genetics Ever Done for Us? The Implications of aDNA Data for Interpreting Identity in Early Neolithic Central Europe

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the impact of ancient DNA data on our models of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in central Europe. Beginning with a brief overview of how genetic data have been received by archaeologists working in this area, it outlines the potential and remaining problems of this kind of evidence. As a migration around the beginning of the Neolithic now seems certain, new research foci are then suggested. One is renewed attention to the motivations and modalities of the migration process. The second is a fundamental change in attitude towards the capabilities of immigrant Neolithic populations to behave in novel and creative ways, abilities which in our transition models were long exclusively associated with hunter-gatherers.

The Brexit hypothesis and prehistory

“…In the so-called ‘CSI-effect’, the public are accustomed to DNA being used in a court of law as infallible evidence, and perceptions of the efficacy and reliability of DNA have been reinforced in media depictions (Brewer & Ley 2010). Media reporting of prehistoric aDNA evidence is rarely accompanied by caveats concerning the problematic nature of interpreting such results (see, for example, Hoffman 2015), or how these data differ from public preconceptions about DNA. Thus, there is huge potential for confusion between ancestry, ethnicity and identity in the reception of media reports about aDNA studies relating, most commonly to archaeological mobility and social change.…”

Reconciling material cultures in archaeology with genetic data requires robust cultural evolutionary taxonomies

“…The difficulties of inferring group coherence or indeed even ethnicity from archaeological material have reemerged with new urgency in the wake of recent publications such as David Reich's (2018) programmatic monograph on archaeogenetics. Foreshadowed by critical reviews of recent archaeogenetic research (Johannsen et al, 2017;Furholt, 2018;Hofmann, 2015), this publication has engendered immediate responses that argue for a more even-handed integration of genomic and archaeological datasets (Linderholm, 2018;Horsburgh, 2018;Vander Linden, 2018;Klein, 2018;Bandelt, 2018;Kirch, 2018). These responses, however, offer little in the way of concrete advice on how such an integration may be achieved methodologically.…”

De-contaminating the aDNA – archaeology dialogue on mobility and migration: discussing the culture-historical legacy

“…Yet aDNA research has instead been tacked on to traditional, outdated and flawed archaeological concepts of social organization and migration, which fall short of the level of discourse already achieved in archaeology and social anthropology: closed culturally and biologically coherent groups of people collectively move from region A to region B, and migration is portrayed in terms of the romantic migration period-style movements of peoples, without any real arguments supporting those images. There is obviously a yet unsolved disjunct between the archaeological and the molecular biological perspectives on prehistory (Müller 2013;Hofmann 2015;Vander Linden 2016;Johannsen et al 2017;Ion 2017;Furholt 2018). This is a problem for all prehistoric periods and regions, but here the third millennium BC in Europe will be used as a case study to discuss some major issues which have become virulent in the models built around the new aDNA evidence.…”