ancient DNA (Other Keyword)
101-125 (239 Records)
This is an abstract from the "The Movement of People and Ideas in Eastern Mesoamerica during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE: A Multidisciplinary Approach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scholars have examined the causes and impacts of the Maya collapse for over a century, using every available line of evidence. In the last decade ancient DNA (aDNA) has proven to be a powerful tool in understanding large-scale population transformations...
Exploring Dental Modification Practices at Midnight Terror Cave, Belize. (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dental modification in Mesoamerica dates to the Early Preclassic Period and persisted into the 16th century. Investigations have suggested a number of possible explanations, generally aesthetic or ritual, for the practice. There is little consensus in the field. A total of 1194 teeth were recovered from Midnight Terror Cave (MTC), Belize,...
Exploring Freshwater Turtle Population Dynamics in the Maya World through Ancient DNA Analysis (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Maya world, zooarchaeological studies have recorded regionally focused declines in animal abundances due to drying conditions and land clearance. However, zooarchaeological data alone cannot document fluctuations in animal population structure or diversity, an insight that can be provided by ancient DNA analysis. In this study, we use...
Exploring Male Sex-Bias in Ancient DNA Research (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Increasing the Accessibility of Ancient DNA within Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Preliminary research and anecdotal evidence suggest that there is an overrepresentation of male samples relative to female samples in published ancient DNA research; however, the reason behind this bias is poorly understood. In this paper, we quantify this sex bias within an ancient DNA database of 3,365 individuals for whom...
Exploring Turkey Exploitation and Management in the Maya Lowlands (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) Domestication, Husbandry and Management in North America and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As one of the few intensively managed species in Mesoamerica, the turkey plays a key role in understanding cultural interactions and subsistence, particularly in the Mayan lowlands. Two populations of turkeys were exploited in this region: the local, wild ocellated turkey...
Exploring Wild Avocado Germplasm through Herbarium Genomes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The avocado has a complicated evolutionary history resulting from landscape-level management and domestication practices. Cultivars of the species are well-documented and categorized into three botanical races based on genetic differentiation, morphology, and adapted environment. However, we have very little knowledge of the avocado’s genetic variation...
First Results of the “Proyecto de investigación de poblaciones antiguas en el norte y occidente de México” (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Increasing the Accessibility of Ancient DNA within Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Genomic analytical techniques have matured enough to address longstanding problems about the interactions and migrations of ancient populations inhabiting the north and west border of Mesoamerica, as well with populations from the US Southwest. With this in mind, we have established a collaborative, binational project...
Freshwater and Anadromous Fishing in Ice Age Beringia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology of Alaska, the Gateway to the Americas" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While freshwater and anadromous fishing are critical economic resources for late prehistoric and modern Indigenous peoples in western North America, the origin and development of fishing is not well understood. Here we present results from investigations into all reported fish assemblages in central Alaska earlier than 7000 cal yr BP....
From Bayira, the Earliest African Genome, to a Place of Refuge: Mota Cave’s History in Southwestern Ethiopia (2018)
Mota Cave located in southwest Ethiopia was found in 2011 in collaboration with local Gamo elders and partially excavated in 2012. The cave has exposed a long sequence of occupation (5295 Cal BP to 305 BP) revealing remarkable technological, subsistence, and cultural changes. We uncovered a burial of a male with the earliest complete ancient genome recovered from the African continent. We have named him Bayira, meaning "first born" in the Gamo language where the cave is located. Bayira begins to...
From Bit Wear to Ancient DNA: Steppe-ing Out (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Wheels, Horses, Babies and Bathwaters: Celebrating the Impact of David W. Anthony on the Study of Prehistory" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We found our first entry into steppe archaeology in 1989-1992 through a study of microwear caused by bits on horse teeth, which we hoped would identify bitted, and therefore ridden or driven, horses. From then through to the publication of the Samara Valley Project (2016) we...
The Future of Paleogenomics in Archaeology: Insights from a Multidisciplinary Study on Sunflower Domestication (2018)
Ancient DNA (aDNA) methodologies have rapidly developed over the past three decades, and today these tools provide a powerful means to investigate a wide range of archaeological inquiries, including human evolution, animal and plant domestication, and paleoenvironmental reconstructions. In this talk, I will summarize general approaches in paleogenomics research, focusing on concerns and questions from archaeologists. To demonstrate how state-of-the-art paleogenomic techniques can contribute to...
Genetic and ZooMS Identification of Marine Mammal Bone from Norse Sites in Iceland and Greenland: Insights into Historic Ecology and Norse Economies (2018)
Evidence from Arctic and North Atlantic archaeological sites shows marine mammals were frequently used by Norse settlers in Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Archaeofaunal assemblages often yield a wealth of complete bones, however, species-level identification is not possible for heavily fragmented specimens. Therefore, specific details about marine mammal utilization are often unquantified and marine species identification largely remains unverified. This paper reveals utility of ZooMS...
Genetic Change in South Patagonia over Seven Millennia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Increasing the Accessibility of Ancient DNA within Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. South Patagonia, the austral extreme of South America, has been inhabited for at least 12,600 years. Following European contact, five ethnic groups of hunter-gatherers (Yámana, Kawéskar, Selk’nam, Haush, and Aónikenk) were documented. They based their subsistence on two broad strategies optimized for maritime or terrestrial...
Genetic data from the Transbay Man (2015)
We present genetic evidence isolated from the remains of the Transbay Man. We compare extracted genomic data to other available gneomic data, placing the Transbay Man in an evolutionary context with other human populations, including previously sequenced Amerindian remains. We discuss the challenges of working with preserved genetic material from warm and wet locations such as the San Francisco Bay Area. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology...
The Genetic History and Diffusion Routes of Early Maize in North America (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Frontiers of Plant Domestication" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological and genetic evidence from modern and ancient maize (Zea mays) samples indicate that maize initially reached the southwestern United States (U.S.) by around 4,000 years ago via a highland Mexican route, followed by a second introduction via the Pacific coast, around 2,000 years ago. However, maize diffusion routes northward from the...
Genetic Identity and Relationships in the Southwest United States and Mexico (2018)
The prehistoric occupants of the Southwestern United States and Mexico have many similarities, including maize agriculture and the Uto-Aztecan language family. A genetic relationship, potentially due to migration between the regions, has been investigated through mitochondrial DNA analysis. However, limited modern and ancient samples, a focus on the hypervariable region of the mitogenome, and limited samples from intermediate regions between the Valley of Mexico and the cultural complexes in the...
Genetic impact of slavery abolition in Mauritius: Ancient DNA data from Le Morne and Bois Marchand cemeteries (2015)
From a demographic point of view, the island of Mauritius can be considered a multicultural melting-pot derived from forced and free labor, as it was there where the British conducted the 'Great Experiment' to replace slaves with indentured workers after abolition. Despite the huge potential that Mauritius offers for studying admixed populations, it has remained uncharacterized from a genetic perspective until now. Several genetic markers have been analyzed in the current Mauritius population...
Genetic Insights into Indo-European Origins (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Wheels, Horses, Babies and Bathwaters: Celebrating the Impact of David W. Anthony on the Study of Prehistory" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient genomic data has provided important new clues that help to address the more than 200-year-old problem of the origin of Indo-European languages. Beginning in 2015, a series of papers have shown that Yamnaya steppe pastoralists--who spread over the steppes north of the...
The Genetic Prehistory of the Andean Highlands 7,000 Years BP though European Contact (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The peopling of the Andean highlands above 2500m in elevation was a complex process that included cultural, biological and genetic adaptations. Here we present a time series of ancient whole genomes from the Andes of Peru, dating back to 7,000 calendar years before present (BP), and compare them to 64 new genome-wide genetic variation datasets from...
The Genetic Prehistory of the New World Arctic (2015)
The New World Arctic, the last region of the Americas to be populated by humans, has a relatively well-researched archaeology. However, there is no consensus on how the different Arctic traditions were genetically related to one another. We present genome-wide sequence data from ancient and present-day humans from Greenland, Arctic Canada, Alaska, Aleutian Islands, and Siberia, contributing new perspectives to the debate of cultural versus genetic replacement in the New World Arctic. We show...
Genetic Species Identification of Large Birds from the Dadiwan Neolithic Site in Northern China (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present information and insight drawn from the Neolithic of northern China (ca. 8,000 – 5,000 BP) about the manner by which large, meaty birds (including potential precursors of the domestic chicken) were drawn into the human biome. Long before they were essential staples, they (along with a range of different, but similar birds) were an occasional, and...
Genetic Variation and Sociocultural Dynamics in Two Early Christian Cemeteries from Kulubnarti (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Skeletal remains from two contemporaneous Early Christian Period (550–800 CE) cemeteries at Kulubnarti in Sudanese Nubia have been the subject of a decades-long biocultural research program. Craniometric and dental analyses have suggested biological similarity between members of the "R" and "S" cemetery communities, while analyses of health and...
Genome Sequencing of Ancient Dogs in the Americas to Understand Their Demographic History (2018)
Several ancient DNA studies have been conducted on dogs in the Americas, yet all have focused on the mitochondrial genome. In this study, we sequenced 79 complete mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) and seven nuclear genomes of ancient dogs from more than twenty archaeological sites, ranging in age from 10,000 to 800 years before present (ybp) to gain insight into the population history of dogs in the Americas. We compared the ancient dogs’ mitogenomes and nuclear genomes to those of modern dogs...
Genome-wide Ancient DNA from Historical Siberia as a Lens on Yeniseian Population History (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The relevance of ancient DNA to debates in language prehistory is a noteworthy strand in Eurasian archaeogenetic research, where much effort has gone towards relating these data to Indo-European. We relate new genome-wide ancient DNA data from a historical Siberian individual to Yeniseian, an enigmatic and isolated language "microfamily" at the...
Genomic Contributions to Understanding Early Caribbean Settlement (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Coloring Outside the Lines: Re-situating Understandings of the Lifeways of Earliest Peoples of the Circum-Caribbean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Caribbean, archaeological and linguistic research have contributed a wealth of knowledge to our understanding of human settlement, yet many issues surrounding dispersal trajectories, adaptation to island environments, and population dynamics over time are still...