Leveraging DNA Capabilities for Lithic Analysis: Experimental Results and Best Practices

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Old Technology, New Methodology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper outlines the results of a multipart experiment in obtaining DNA deposited on lithics to address questions regarding localized resource use. Previous publications hypothesize that DNA molecules can be preserved in microcracks in lithics and suggest that questions regarding resource exploitation can be addressed with lithics. The goal of this project is to expand the analytical toolkit used to study lithics by incorporating methodologies designed for ancient DNA (aDNA). Using stone tools manufactured for this experiment, we simulated DNA deposition from hunting activities by cutting a sheep leg, then burying the tools for 12 months before cleanly excavating them. Following aDNA best practices, the tools were processed for DNA extraction using several variations of a previously published extraction protocol for lithics, to evaluate how best to maximize success while ensuring artifact security. We amplified fragments of the sheep mitochondrial genome 50, 69, 77, and 100 base pairs long using both published and in-house designed primers. Success was measured by the fraction of attempts yielding amplifiable target DNA. These amplicons were Sanger sequenced to confirm target species presence. Preliminary results show the successful amplification of target DNA from modern lithics, suggesting further potential for aDNA analysis of lithic artifacts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Old Technology, New Methodology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36834.0