It has been an unexpected but enjoyable task to put together my own selection of papers on ancient DNA research that have appeared in JAS over the last 22 years. The history of ancient DNA research is reflected here, from its earliest beginnings in 1985 as a scientific curiosity, from the excitement of the discovery that the polymerase chain reaction could be used to amplify degraded DNA templates in the late 1980s, the first amplifications of human DNA from archaeological bone samples in 1989, the realisation in the mid-1990s that contamination was a major issue, to the concerns with establishing standards for ancient DNA research. The latter is still a live debate, as is contamination. In 2000 a pivotal paper was published entitled ‘Ancient DNA – Do it right or not at all’ (Cooper and Poinar in Science) which set out the concerns and standards for the field. Many papers have been rejected by JAS because they have not followed these standards. JAS is not to be used as a ‘dumping ground’ for work that is substandard or trivial. I have chosen papers that I feel have made a significant contribution to ancient DNA research, either methodologically or through applications to archaeological questions. This is after all a journal of Archaeological Science, so some archaeology ought to appear somewhere!
