Increasing the Accessibility of Ancient DNA within Archaeology

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Increasing the Accessibility of Ancient DNA within Archaeology" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Building on 2019's session examining how ancient DNA research can best support the goals of archaeology, we focus this year’s session on how ancient DNA research and the data it generates can be made more accessible to archaeologists, and why this is essential for the future of archaeogenetics. The field of ancient DNA continues along a trajectory of rapid growth, with many studies now analyzing tens or hundreds of individuals from previously unexplored regions of the world or periods of time. This trend emphasizes the need for an increase in the quantity and quality of communication between archaeologists and geneticists surrounding the standards and guidelines used to develop research agendas as well as the analytical methods used and interpretations made in studies of the past. The papers in this session provide examples of integrative archaeogenetics projects, present methodological developments that have enabled such projects, and otherwise discuss and explore the symbiotic relationship between archaeology and genetics. By increasing the transparency of our research and taking further steps toward a common language understood by researchers from these different, but complementary, disciplines, the papers in this session broadly contribute to the overarching goal of furthering active dialogue between archaeologists and geneticists.