Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This session examines how ancient DNA can best support archaeological research. The "ancient

DNA revolution" is transforming our understanding of the human past – an understanding

meticulously built through decades of archaeological research. While the first ancient genome

was published only in 2010 and the number only reached 100 in 2015, more than 1,000 ancient

genomes were published within the last year alone. The proliferation of ancient DNA and its

inherent dependence on archaeological material for analysis requires collaborative efforts

between archaeologists and geneticists, balancing the grand narratives of demographic history

over space and time with finer-grained research questions in archaeology. To properly integrate

these two fields however – to move toward a true science of "archaeogenetics" – ancient DNA

must be made more accessible to archaeologists and be more tuned to questions posed by

archaeologists. Papers in this session provide examples of how ancient DNA can enrich our

understanding of the archaeological record, explain the techniques used in ancient DNA

research, provide case studies of integrative archaeogenetics projects, and explore how

archaeologists and geneticists can establish a symbiotic relationship in the years ahead.

Other Keywords
ancient DNA • Migration • demography • Social and Political Organization • bioarchaeology • Chronology • Ethics • Pastoralism • Colonialism • Woodland

Geographic Keywords
North America (Continent) • Republic of Panama (Country) • Republic of Colombia (Country) • Netherlands Antilles (Country) • Aruba (Country) • Republic of Ecuador (Country) • South America (Continent) • Worldwide • United Mexican States (Country) • Republic of Peru (Country)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-16 of 16)

  • Documents (16)
Documents
  • Ancient DNA Analysis of Orton Quarry (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Paige Plattner. Meradeth Snow.

    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 Orton Quarry site is a Late Prehistoric ossuary along the coast of Lake Erie in Pennsylvania. In March 1991, heavy-equipment operators accidentally destroyed a majority of the site before archeologists arrived. Since the excavation very little had been published on the Orton Quarry site, it’s importance or its original inhabitants. One of the...

  • Ancient Human DNA from Shum Laka (Cameroon) in the Context of African Population History (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Lipson. Mary Prendergast. Isabelle Ribot. Carles Lalueza-Fox. David Reich.

    This is an abstract from the "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We generated genome-wide DNA data from four people buried at the site of Shum Laka in Cameroon between 8000–3000 years ago. One individual carried the deeply divergent Y chromosome haplogroup A00 found at low frequencies among some present-day Niger-Congo speakers, but the genome-wide ancestry profiles for all four individuals are very different...

  • Ancient Pathogen Genomes from Pre- and Early Colonial Epidemics in Mesoamerica and the Evolution of Parathyphi C (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Johannes Krause.

    This is an abstract from the "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Genome wide data from ancient microbes may help to understand mechanisms of pathogen evolution and adaptation for emerging and re-emerging infectious disease. Ancient pathogen genomes provide furthermore the possibility to identify causative agents of past pandemics and therefore elucidate mortality crisis such as the early contact period in the New...

  • An Archaeogenetic Approach to Studying the Demographic History of Rome (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Moots. Margaret Antonio. Ziyue Gao. Jonathan Pritchard.

    This is an abstract from the "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From shipwrecks to monuments, coins to mosaics, the Aeneid to the Satyricon, classicists, archeologists, and historians draw on a range of media to study ancient Rome. As a new media to study the past, ancient genomes provide direct insight into the demographic histories of Rome’s inhabitants. This talk highlights our team’s interdisciplinary...

  • Beyond the Big Picture: An integrative Paleogenomic study to address regional dynamics and political organization in the Peruvian Moche Culture (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lars Fehren-Schmitz. Kelly Harkins. John Krigbaum. Regulo Jordan. Jeffrey Quilter.

    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 genomic revolution opened up new dimensions for paleogenomic research, inconceivable only a decade ago. However, with a primary focus on big-picture population genetics like large-scale migration events, paleogenetics also became somewhat removed from problem-based archaeological research questions with a regional focus, addressing issues such...

  • Beyond the Genome: Unravelling Life Processes Using Epigenomes and Ancient RNA (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Oliver Smith. Glenn Dunshea. Robin Allaby. Tom Gilbert.

    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 power of ancient DNA to archaeological research needs little introduction. Recent technological revolutions in DNA sequencing have allowed entire populations, lineages, ecosystems, and epidemics to be reconstructed. While these large-scale studies address 'big picture’ questions of prehistory, more subtle, specific questions about past...

  • Biomolecular Preservation in Dental Calculus from the Teotihuacan Ritual Landscape (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sterling Wright. Nihan Kilic. Karissa Hughes. Nawa Sugiyama. Courtney Hofman.

    This is an abstract from the "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Classic Period (AD 1-550), thousands of people migrated to the ancient city of Teotihuacan. This population growth forged Teotihuacan into a center for economic, political, and religious activities for the Mesoamerican region. While archaeological evidence has provided a wealth of information about the state, little is known about its...

  • Building a More Precise Understanding of the Past by Merging Techniques from Archaeology and Ancient DNA Analysis (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jakob Sedig.

    This is an abstract from the "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient DNA (aDNA) data have provided unprecedented new insights on demographic changes through time. This paper demonstrates that aDNA can also enhance well-established archaeological techniques, by building on research that has explored how aDNA data can help refine radiocarbon date range estimates. Previous research established that since there...

  • The Genetic Prehistory of the Andean Highlands 7,000 Years BP though European Contact (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only John Lindo. Randall Hass. Christina Warinner. Mark Aldenderfer. Anna Di Rienzo.

    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...

  • Genetic Variation and Sociocultural Dynamics in Two Early Christian Cemeteries from Kulubnarti (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kendra Sirak. Dennis Van Gerven. Jessica Thompson. Ron Pinhasi. David Reich.

    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-wide Ancient DNA from Historical Siberia as a Lens on Yeniseian Population History (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Kim. Tatyana Savenkova. Svetlana Smushko. Yevgenia Reis. David Reich.

    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...

  • The Genomic Formation of Central and South Asia (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Vagheesh Narasimhan.

    This is an abstract from the "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper serves as an example of how ancient DNA (aDNA) data can provide new insight into large-scale population transformations of archaeological cultures. The details of population transformation through time in Central and South Asia have been unclear due to the lack of aDNA. To address this gap, we generated genome-wide data from 500 ancient...

  • How to Choose Samples for aDNA: Bioarchaeological Best Practices for Sampling Human Remains (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Sawchuk. Mary Prendergast.

    This is an abstract from the "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent methodological advances have rapidly increased the pace and scale of ancient DNA (aDNA) studies, prompting widespread sampling in museum collections and raising ethical concerns about inter-lab competition, treatment of human remains, and the research questions being addressed. Another key issue is selection of material that will be destroyed...

  • Identification of Mitochondrial Haplogroups in Native Mexican and Mestizo Populations (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Marlen Flores Huacuja. Humberto Garcia-Ortiz. Angelica Martinez-Hernandez. Lorena Orozco-Orozco. Meradeth Snow.

    This is an abstract from the "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Currently in Mexico there are around 68 ethnic groups, grouped into 11 linguistic families, representing 15% of the Mexican population. The mitogenome (mtDNA) has allowed us to make inferences about the history of and relationships between these populations. However, the evaluation of the mitochondrial genetic structure in the Mexican population has...

  • MtDNA Analysis of the Paquimé (Casas Grandes), Mexico, Population (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Summers. Meradeth Snow. Michael Searcy.

    This is an abstract from the "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research project investigates the population interred at the archaeological site known as Paquimé (Casas Grandes), Mexico between two time periods known as the Viejo Period (700 - 1200 A.D.) and the Medio Period (1200 - 1450 A.D.). There was a shift in culture during the latter period marked by changes in material culture and the bringing...

  • Presence of the Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Complex (MTBC) in ancient skeletal samples from Ukraine (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Tre Blohm. Jordan Karsten. Ryan Schmidt. Meradeth Snow.

    This is an abstract from the "Ancient DNA in Service of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research aims to investigate biocultural interactions by studying ancient disease among the Tripolye, a Neolithic group dating to 4,900-2,900 calBC, and one of the first agricultural populations in Eastern Europe. The Tripolye lived at higher population densities and had closer contact with bovines than the hunter-gatherers that came before...