Beyond curse or blessing: The opportunities and challenges of aDNA analysis

Abstract

The papers in this volume all have different perspectives but, together, they suggest that the discipline of archaeology continues to struggle with the multi-directional and multi-scalar tensions that have come with the rapidly evolving methods of aDNA analysis. In many ways, the development of aDNA analysis would seem to mirror that of the early development of radiocarbon dating, when new 14 C determinations could be grumpily dismissed as ‘archaeologically inacceptable’ (Piggott 1959, 289) rather than engaged with Show more