There is a growing awareness of a new challenge for the management of archaeological human remains excavated from the UK. Over the past year, an increasing number of UK institutions have received enquiries from customers of commercial DNA companies about individuals in their care who have been sampled for ancient DNA analysis.
Typically, ancient DNA results are published open-access and the data deposited with online databanks.
International commercial DNA companies who focus on ancestry are now using these datasets to match their customers with archaeological human remains – and advising them that they are a ‘direct descendant’ of this past individual.
Some customers, curious about their ancestry, are accessing the publications and then contacting the institutions curating the human remains. Typically, these enquiries ask for more information about the individual and their archaeological context – a request not too dissimilar from the usual range of questions received by an institution about their holdings.
But these new type of enquiry poses several challenges – foremost, that existing guidance and advice about the management of human remains published by (among others) the Advisory Panel on the Archaeology of Burials in England, does not specifically deal with this issue.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s Guidance for the Care of Human Remains for Museums states: “It is accepted that members of a family or wider community might wish to exert rights as to where human remains that relate to them are located and how they are treated… Precedent shows that claims can come from genealogical descendants, cultural community and nations”.
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Years of budget cuts across the heritage sector present another challenge. Most institutions in the UK do not have a curator dedicated solely to human remains, and many do not have an archaeology curator.
Institutional knowledge about holdings and research activities has been lost due to staff-cuts, and less well-funded institutions have been unable to continue their membership of specialist networks or other professional bodies, who can provide advice and support.
The situation is compounded by rapid developments in the methods and reliability of ancient DNA studies, which means that without specialist knowledge and access to that scholarship, understanding the issues raised by these enquiries may be impossible without help.
To address this gap in advice, we have produced a response letter which can be used to help manage these enquiries. It seeks to explain that the ‘direct descent’ claim made by these commercial companies is more complicated than they may propose, and that the customer’s genetic ancestry will be shared by many hundreds if not thousands of people alive today.
We also suggest that institutions contact the lab responsible for the results, as accession numbers or site/context identifiers can usually only be found in the supplementary materials that accompany the published article, and these may be difficult to navigate.
Additionally, we recommend that institutions update their policy documentation to include this new development. In cases where DNA labs request to sample named individuals, those with other considerations (for example, a rare pathology), or if dealing with subsequent enquiries may be particularly onerous, we suggest that prior to the sampling taking place, that institutions should discuss if the data could be made “available on request” rather than open-access.
Rebecca Redfern is the senior curator of archaeology at London Museum. Simon Mays is the senior human skeletal biologist at Historic England. Tom Booth is a senior laboratory research scientist at Skoglund Lab, the Francis Crick Institute. Sarah Stark is a human skeletal biologist at Historic England.
Help and guidance can be found from the following professional bodies:
