Archaeological Recovery of Late Pleistocene Hair and Environmental DNA from Interior Alaska

Brian T. Wygal, Kathryn E. Krasinski, Jessica Z. Metcalfe, David McMahan, Charles E. Holmes, Barbara A. Crass, Teresa A. Wriston, Sabrina Shirazi, Alisa Vershinina and Beth Shapiro

Environmental Archaeology, 2024, vol. 29, issue 3, 265-280

Abstract: Ancient hair and remnant plant DNA are important environmental proxies that preserve for millennia in specific archaeological contexts. However, recovery has been rare from late Pleistocene sites and more may be found if deliberately sought. Once discovered, singular hair fragments are not easily identified to taxa through comparative analyses and environmental DNA (eDNA) extraction can be difficult depending on preservation or contamination. In this paper, we present our methods for the combined recovery of ancient hair specimens and eDNA from sediments to improve our understanding of late Pleistocene environments from the Holzman site along Shaw Creek in interior Alaska. The approach serves as a useful case study for learning more about local environmental changes.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14614103.2022.2031836 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:yenvxx:v:29:y:2024:i:3:p:265-280

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/yenv20

DOI: 10.1080/14614103.2022.2031836

Access Statistics for this article

Environmental Archaeology is currently edited by Tim Mighall

More articles in Environmental Archaeology from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().