Ancient DNA in motion: Studying past human mobility and interactions by integrating archaeogenetics and archaeology

Here, we present an overview of how archaeogenomic data can be used to investigate past mobilities and how it can be integrated with archaeological research to reconstruct models of human mobility at different scales. We first seek to explain the importance of a clear terminological and theoretical approach to mobility, discussing terms such as migration, admixture, ancestry, and replacement. We then describe the theoretical principles and state-of-the-art tools for inferring past mobility from ancient DNA data, including exploratory approaches and formal modeling, and the relevance of using diverse lines of evidence including allele-frequency patterns, haplotype-sharing, genetic relatedness, and uniparental markers. We further discuss the power and limitations of these methods for inferring different modes of mobility, such as large-scale and long-distance mobility, which we refer to as migration, and also small-scale and short-distance movements, which we argue constituted the bulk of past human mobility and may have had the major share in shaping cultural landscapes. We also describe inference of sex-biased mobility events. Finally, we present examples of joint analyses of genomic data with archaeological, bioarchaeological and historical evidence, demonstrating the potential of interdisciplinary analyses in building comprehensive models of past mobilities. We finish by calling for further integration across fields.