Blakey’s critique of Reich into a European context – which I would like to do because that is the field with which I am more familiar – it should be obvious that in the same way as race is an ideological construct, so too are other categorizations of humans used in European archaeology and in archaeogenetic studies. Here the most critical examples are the essentialization of social identities, like gender stereotypes and ethnicities modelled after modern nation states. The same could be argued for the recurring claims of violence, war and social inequality as inevitable characteristics of human societies, projecting them back into deep prehistory, on shaky empirical foundations. When the narratives connected to the newly found ancient-DNA data reproduce modern Western tropes about ethnic identities, gender relations and the role of war and violence in intergroup relations, we cannot really fall back on the defence that it is something that objectively follows from our neutral reading of the data. All the relevant categories, the populations, cultures, migrations and population replacements, really just reproduce the categories inserted by us and projected back into prehistory. This not only is intellectually lazy, but also prevents us from really gaining new knowledge about the past. This is even more unfortunate, as it is well-established wisdom that the concept of static cultures blatantly misrepresents both the archaeological record (Hofmann 2015; Vander Linden 2016; Furholt 2018; 2019b) and the anthropological knowledge of non-state social organization (e.g. Cameron 2013). Do we really have to, begrudgingly, succumb to acknowledging a prehistory that ‘we may not like’ – because it is filled with violent misogynist hordes from the East, forming biologically defined groups of young males, who bully their way through Europe, killing and raping themselves into our gene pool (perhaps a little unfairly challenging the well-argued piece by Kristiansen et al. 2017, but clearly expressed in its popular adaptation by Barras 2019)? Is it not our responsibility to counter such narratives, which reproduce the right-wing’s view of human history as a perpetual clash of cultures? Especially when we actually know that it was us who inserted these ideas into our models in the first place? So it is clearly necessary to rethink our categories if we want to avoid giving ideological ammunition to nefarious political forces, but more fundamentally it is a prerequisite for arriving at any new ideas about the past. Is it not actually an exciting challenge for the new archaeogenetic project to create models that consider other forms of group organization than the ones known for our own modern world? Would it not be an innovative take to explore the temporal and spatial dynamics of population histories in periods before state borders circumscribed and regulated peoples’ movements and biological admixtures? Blakey’s critique of biodeterminism and the notion of scientific objectivity is not only an invitation to self-reflection, but we should take it as an opportunity to think of ways forward in creating a truly interdisciplinary archaeogenetic research agenda.

中文翻译：

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生物决定论想象的奇怪来世

布莱基在欧洲背景下对帝国的批判——我愿意这样做，因为这是我更熟悉的领域——很明显，就像种族是一种意识形态结构一样，人类的其他分类也是如此用于欧洲考古学和考古学研究。这里最关键的例子是社会身份的本质化，例如以现代民族国家为蓝本的性别刻板印象和种族。对于反复出现的关于暴力、战争和社会不平等作为人类社会不可避免的特征的主张，也可以这样说，将它们推回到史前时期，建立在摇摇欲坠的经验基础上。当与新发现的古代 DNA 数据相关的叙述再现了现代西方关于种族身份的比喻时，性别关系以及战争和暴力在群体间关系中的作用，我们不能真正依靠辩护，认为这是我们对数据的中立阅读客观得出的。所有相关的类别，人口、文化、迁移和人口更替，实际上只是复制了我们插入并投射回史前时期的类别。这不仅在智力上是懒惰的，而且还使我们无法真正获得关于过去的新知识。更不幸的是，静态文化的概念公然歪曲考古记录（Hofmann 2015；Vander Linden 2016；Furholt 2018；2019b）和非国家社会组织的人类学知识（例如卡梅伦 2013）。我们真的必须，不情愿地，屈从于承认“我们可能不喜欢”的史前史——因为它充满了来自东方的暴力厌恶女性群体，形成生物学上定义的年轻男性群体，他们在欧洲欺负他们的方式，在我们的基因库中杀戮和强奸自己（也许有点不公平地挑战 Kristiansen 等人 2017 年争论不休的作品，但在 Barras 2019 年的流行改编中清楚地表达了）？反对这样的叙述难道不是我们的责任吗？这些叙述再现了右翼将人类历史视为文化永恒冲突的观点？尤其是当我们真正知道是我们首先将这些想法插入我们的模型时？因此，如果我们想避免给邪恶的政治力量提供意识形态弹药，显然有必要重新考虑我们的类别，但更根本的是，它是对过去产生任何新想法的先决条件。对于新的考古学项目来说，创建模型来考虑其他形式的群体组织，而不是我们自己的现代世界所熟知的模型，这实际上不是一个令人兴奋的挑战吗？在国家边界限制和规范人们的运动和生物混合物之前的时期，探索人口历史的时空动态不是一个创新的方法吗？布莱基对生物决定论和科学客观性概念的批评不仅是对自我反省的邀请，而且我们应该以此为契机，思考如何创建真正的跨学科考古研究议程。对于新的考古学项目来说，创建模型来考虑其他形式的群体组织，而不是我们自己的现代世界所熟知的模型，这实际上不是一个令人兴奋的挑战吗？在国家边界限制和规范人们的运动和生物混合物之前的时期，探索人口历史的时空动态不是一个创新的方法吗？布莱基对生物决定论和科学客观性概念的批评不仅是对自我反省的邀请，而且我们应该以此为契机，思考如何创建真正的跨学科考古研究议程。对于新的考古学项目来说，创建模型来考虑其他形式的群体组织，而不是我们自己的现代世界所熟知的模型，这实际上不是一个令人兴奋的挑战吗？在国家边界限制和规范人们的运动和生物混合物之前的时期，探索人口历史的时空动态不是一个创新的方法吗？布莱基对生物决定论和科学客观性概念的批评不仅是对自我反省的邀请，而且我们应该以此为契机，思考如何创建真正的跨学科考古研究议程。