Ghosts in the Sediment: Finding Ancient People Who Left No Bones Behind
Standfirst: Human bones are among archaeology’s most persuasive witnesses, but they are also uncommon. A decade of work on ancient DNA preserved in cave sediments is beginning to recover the genetic traces of people whose bodies were never found. The method can reveal who occupied a site, and sometimes their population history, but only when molecules are treated as archaeological evidence with a stratigraphy of their own.