Contact-Era Tuberculosis at Kanamarka, Peru

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Kanamarka, a Peruvian highland site approximately 150 kilometers south of Cusco, contains an early colonial-era churchyard. In use from approximately 1530-1580 CE, this cemetery is the likely resting place of contact-era disease victims. The Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC), a phylogeographically-dispersed group of deadly pathogens, existed in South America long before the arrival of European colonizers, albeit a different species from the one in Europe. M. pinnipedii, known to infect modern seals and sea lions, appears to have infected human populations in the pre-Hispanic Andes but has since been replaced by the European lineage of TB (L4). Using metagenomic methods to analyze single-stranded libraries, we recovered MTBC DNA in 15 individuals from Kanamarka’s churchyard, providing insight into Andean MTBC in the colonial era. Our findings illuminate the biocultural and molecular mechanisms that contributed to the replacement of M. pinnipedii. We offer a retrospective view of the dynamic nature of infectious diseases within contexts of socio-political and cultural transitions, both known to impact modern-day tuberculosis. In collaboration with community members, these results will be interpreted as part of a larger project and used to enrich local educational units and museum displays. This poster contains no images of human remains.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37468.0