Multi-omic Analyses of Naturally Preserved Brains from a Philadelphia Cemetery: Insights from Molecular Taphonomy and Implications for Paleopathology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Arch Street Project: Multidisciplinary Research of a Philadelphia Cemetery" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

As one of the first organs to decompose postmortem, brains are far more numerous than they should be in the archaeological record. >4,400 preserved human brains dating back some 12,000 years have been reported in the last four centuries; yet archaeological nervous tissues remain little-studied, with <1% explored at the molecular level. During construction at the site of the eighteenth-century First Baptist Church of Philadelphia (FBCP) Cemetery, >60 brains were found within the cranial cavities of otherwise skeletonized individuals. These remains were examined as part of a comprehensive, systematic, and highly interdisciplinary investigation of 12 assemblages (n > 150) of archaeological nervous tissues from across North America and Europe, conducted to probe the chemical mechanisms underpinning spontaneous brain preservation. Proteomic and lipidomic analyses by ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry have yielded a wealth of biomolecular data not only on the transformation of nervous tissues after death, but which also illuminates health and disease status in the once living. Resolving the processes by which the brain preserves at the FBCP site will ensure that we maximize recovery of the unique bioarchaeological information this most metabolically active organ harbors and enrich our interpretation of this historical community.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Arch Street Project: Multidisciplinary Research of a Philadelphia Cemetery   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39904.0