How Interdisciplinary is Interdisciplinarity? Revisiting the Impact of aDNA Research for the Archaeology of Human Remains

Abstract

With this paper I propose a reflection on the way interdisciplinarity is framed in reference to the study of archaeological human remains. It is often taken for granted that interdisciplinarity is valuable for archaeology – but why should it be? By taking the case study of the way ancient genomics research is rewriting the ‘Neolithic Revolution’ narratives I show how the use of scientific methodologies in- fluences and biases the kind of work that gets done and the questions that are asked.

Keywords

• method
• narrative