Forensic Techniques to Investigate Museum and Archaeological Samples

Summary

Forensic biologists utilize the latest DNA technologies to deal with low level, difficult, and degraded samples on a regular basis. In fact, forensic testing is specifically designed and validated to be robust under conditions that would cause most other genetic testing to fail. It is therefore no surprise that forensic genetic techniques can assist museums with research questions regarding their collections. Here we discuss how, using forensic techniques and testing, we were able to analyze museum exhibits/samples to determine either species, in the case of non-human samples, or, in the case of human samples, genetic profiles including ancestry markers, using Next Generation Sequencing.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Forensic Archaeology

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17163