The Integrity of Biomolecules across the Oral Matrix from Histria, Romania

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

During the Archaic period (seventh century–sixth century BCE), Greek colonists from Miletus founded the city of Histria. Located near the mouth of the Danube, this urban center experienced 13 centuries of environmental and demographic changes. Archaeological investigations over the past century have yielded a rich skeletal collection that is housed in the Fr. J. Rainer Institute of Anthropology in Bucharest. Several researchers have performed archaeological and osteological analyses on these remains, but no one has applied biomolecular techniques. To assess biomolecular preservation at the site, this project applied metagenomic sequencing to two dental calculus and two dentin samples and additionally carried out a proteomic analysis of sex-specific peptides on two dentin samples. All samples date to the Roman imperial period. Our analyses indicate adequate preservation. Microbial analyses suggest that the calculus samples contain human-associated oral taxa. While the human analyses identified two haplotypes, they indicate that the human samples may have some contamination. Nevertheless, a damage analysis revealed shallow levels of damage in the microbial and human sequences. Additionally, we identified the sex of two individuals using minimally destructive proteomic methods. These results provide a direction for potential research on the skeletal remains.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32740