The identification of identical twins in ancient archaeological contexts through genomic analysis is rare enough to warrant specific discussion.

Most ancient genomics research focuses on population-level questions: where did a particular ancient population come from, how is it related to other ancient and modern populations, what genetic changes occurred over time?

The identification of specific biological relationships between individual ancient people — kinship analysis at the level of specific pairs of individuals — is a methodologically distinct enterprise that requires a different kind of analysis and benefits from having multiple individuals from the same archaeological context available for comparison.

When ancient DNA studies have the opportunity to compare multiple individuals from the same site or burial context, kinship analysis becomes possible.