Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction at Poverty Point Using Ancient Sedimentary DNA: Potential and Challenges

Summary

This is an abstract from the "*SE Not Your Father’s Poverty Point: Rewriting Old Narratives through New Research" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Poverty Point is a wonder of engineering, with over two square kilometers of earthworks constructed over several hundred years around 3500 BP. While the timing of the deposit’s construction has been a topic of research for nearly 100 years, there has been relatively little investigation into the resources that would have encouraged large populations to gather, contributing to construction of the earthworks. Exploration into subsistence remains has been difficult because the acidic soils of the region tend to degrade macrobotanical and faunal remains. Researchers therefore often rely on comparative samples found at other sites in the region to draw conclusions about the subsistence resources used at Poverty Point. Innovations in ancient sedaDNA (sedimentary DNA) extraction techniques offer potential avenues for reconstructing subsistence data. In this paper, we address the potential of these new techniques as well as the challenges collecting sedaDNA from tropical environments. Specifically, we discuss recent improvements to sedaDNA extraction, library preparation, and targeted enrichment protocols that enhance both the efficiency of sequencing and the detection of target organisms using fragmented and damaged DNA molecules. While tropical locations are not ideal for measuring sedaDNA, these innovations increase the likelihood of recovering ancient ecological information from less favorable environments.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• *SE Not Your Father’s Poverty Point: Rewriting Old Narratives through New Research

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39057.0