111 © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 E. Pişkin et al. (eds.), Environmental Archaeology, Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75082-8_6 Bridging Archaeology and Genetics Ophélie Lebrasseur, Hannah Ryan, and Cinthia Abbona 1 Introduction The discovery of DNA over 50 years ago led to a revolution in the medical and biological ields. Following the advent of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) a couple of decades later (Mullis and Faloona 1987), DNA became just as valuable a tool in archaeology. Armed with mitochondrial DNA fragments, archaeologists and geneticists explored human origins (Ingman et al. 2000; Lazaridis et al. 2014), identiied domestication centres (Bruford et al. 2003) and investigated evolutionary relationships between species (Pitra et al. 2004; Sanchez-Puerta and Abbona 2014). The technological development of massive parallel sequencing also known as next- generation sequencing (NGS) in the last decade has facilitated the acquisition of ancient and modern nuclear DNA data. Whole nuclear and mitochondrial genomes have largely contributed to our understanding of ancient populations on a much larger scale as well as our identiication of phenotypically important nuclear loci. With sequencing techniques evolving rapidly and becoming more powerful in generating large amount of molecular data, the need for an open, clear and comprehensible dialogue between archaeologists and geneticists is crucial. The power of sequencing techniques in generating high-resolution data can lead to apparently conclusive results, leading geneticists to omit the importance of the archaeological context. Similarly, the ield is still marred by misconceptions All authors have contributed equally to the manuscript and share irst authorship. O. Lebrasseur (*) · H. Ryan Palaeogenomics & Bio-Archaeology Research Network, School of Archaeology, Oxford, UK e-mail: ophelie.lebrasseur@arch.ox.ac.uk C. Abbona Museo de Historia Natural de San Rafael, San Rafael, Mendoza, Argentina