It is also work that was done on the physical remains of specific people, and its value does not exempt it from the ethical obligations that attending to the dead requires.

The living Maya communities of the Yucatán and beyond, who are the descendants of the people of Chichén Itzá, have specific relationships to these ancestral remains and to the research conducted on them.

Their perspectives on that research, and on how it is conducted and communicated, are part of the ethical context in which ancient genomics work must take place.

The Question of Selection