Beyond broad strokes: sociocultural insights from the study of ancient genomes

In the field of human history, ancient DNA has provided answers to long-standing debates about major movements of people and has begun to inform on other important facets of the human experience. The field is now moving from mostly large-scale supraregional studies to a more local perspective, shedding light on socioeconomic processes, inheritance rules, marriage practices and technological diffusion. In this Review, we summarize recent studies showcasing these types of insights, focusing on methods used to infer sociocultural aspects of human behaviour. This approach often involves working across disciplines — such as anthropology, archaeology, linguistics and genetics — that have until recently evolved in separation. Multidisciplinary dialogue is important for an integrated reconstruction of human history, which can yield extraordinary insights about past societies, reproductive behaviours and even lifestyle habits that would not be possible to obtain otherwise. With the increasing availability of ancient genomes from the same region or locality, the field of human history has started to address sociocultural aspects of human behaviour. The authors review recent case studies reconstructing the social consequences of past human migrations and advocate that this complex enterprise should be addressed by multidisciplinary teams.