Ancient DNA from Ice, Sediments, and Coprolites

ESKE WILLERSLEV, Ph.D.
Centre for Ancient Genetics
University of Copenhagen

Ancient DNA from animals and plants can be obtained directly from basal glacial ice, sediments, and coprolites. This enables us to study environments prior to glaciations, extinction events of megafuna, and past migration routes of humans and animals. In this talk a number of case studies will be presented on how ancient DNA from ice, sediments and coprolites can be used to address specific scientific questions along with a discussion of possible pitfalls connected to this type of research.

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Modeling Pleistocene Local Climatic Parameters and the Paleoecology of Pleistocene Megafauna: A New Approach to Understanding Pleistocene Extinctions

H. GREGORY MCDONALD, Ph.D.
Park Museum Management Program
Fort Collins, Colorado 80525

REID BRYSON, Ph.D.
Center for Climatic Research
University of Wisconsin
Madison, Wisconsin 53706

The question of the ultimate causes of extinction of the megafauna at the end of the Pleistocene is one of timing. Can it be demonstrated that the disappearance of a species coincided with or occurred shortly after the first appearance of humans in a region or alternatively can it be demonstrated that the disappearance of a species coincided with or occurred shortly after an environmental or climatic change. It is also critical to demonstrate whether such a climatic change was widespread and synchronous over the entire range of the species or diachronic resulting in the more gradual disappearance of the species through time and space. At the moment we have limited knowledge of physical parameters such as seasonal variations in temperature and rainfall related to the ecology of an extinct species.

The Macrophysical Climate Modeling (MCM) is predicated on orbital forcing, variations in atmospheric transparency, and the principles of synoptic climatology. The model has previously been applied to archeological sites and has been referred to as archaeoclimatology. We have extended the use of the model into the late Pleistocene to examine the relationships of the paleoecology and distribution of the North American fauna to various climatic parameters, such as monthly temperature and precipitation patterns, although other climatic patterns can be determined from the model as well. Site specificity is the key component to the model as it lets us examine climatic parameters at individual sites with extinct fauna and compare multiple sites to look at shared climatic parameters. Calculations from the model are done for 200 year averages (now moving to 100 year) and allow us to utilize AMS radiocarbon dates for individual extinct species and determine climatic parameters for narrow slices of time. Consequently the model allows us to examine specific climatic parameters that may be related to an extinct species' paleoecology and critically examine climatic events that may be related to the extinction of species at the end of the Pleistocene. We present examples of paleoclimatic parameters for different extinct species of megafauna related to their paleoecology and how this may be related to explanations for their subsequent extinction.

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How Much Faith Can We Put in Ancient Genetic Data?

M. THOMAS P. GILBERT, Ph.D.
Center for Ancient Genetics
University of Copenhagen

Discoveries linked to ancient DNA (aDNA) studies repeatedly hit the headlines of both the popular and scientific press. As such, aDNA can often appear to the to non-specialist as a miracle tool that provides a means to answer otherwise unapproachable questions. However, aDNA studies are not without their flaws - indeed critics have argued that they suffer more problems than many comparable fields of research. As such, exactly how much information aDNA studies can add to scientific debate remains uncertain.

Here I discuss some of the problems that affect the field, with the aim of highlighting exactly how much faith we can put in published data. Furthermore, I discuss potential solutions to some of the problems and future work that needs to be undertaken in order that aDNA studies develop a sounder theoretical basis.

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See You in Court

PAULA BARRAN, J.D.
Attorney, Barran Liebman
Portland, OR

Some controversies spark legal as well as scientific debate. Those that are headed for a judicial resolution (such as, for example, competing claims about the applicability of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) present special challenges because the Federal Rules of Evidence govern the admissibility of scientific evidence. The present-day evidentiary rules grew out of controversies such as the reliability of early versions of the polygraph, or the causes for certain birth defects but are applicable to all scientific or expert evidence. This paper and presentation will discuss the origins and requirements of the rule, its importance in judicial controversies, and how courts are instructed to measure the reliability of scientific evidence.

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Thinking Small and Falling Short: A Critique of Myopia in Archaeological Inquiry

MICHAEL B. COLLINS, Ph.D.
University of Texas Archeological Research Laboratory
Austin, TX

Peopling the Western Hemisphere as the last major phase in Human Adaptive Radiation is of global significance, yet many of those who claim to be investigating the phenomenon fail to consider its full scope. First, this was a process, not an event. Comprehensive understanding this process involves the full suite of cultural and natural conditions of the Northern Hemisphere and the evolutionary status of Homo sapiens for at least the past 25,000 years. Humans were far more cosmopolitan, mobile, and capable than we tend to assume. General and specific examples of myopia and its consequences in investigating the peopling of the Americas illustrate the problem.

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Environments of the Northwest Entrada

REID A. BRYSON, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
University of Wisconsin

KATHERINE M. DEWALL
University of Wisconsin

Two routes existed for migration into North America from the northwest: the 'coastal route' along the western side and the 'ice-free corridor' through the interior between the ice sheets. This paper will consider the geographic and climatic factors that affect the relative timing and feasibility of the two routes using the Archaeoclimatology Macrophysical Climate Model in connection with geographic conditions and obstacles. Whether one or the other was actually used in the immigration process must, logically, be a function of time, but the final evidence must come from archaeological fieldwork. Our comparison of the conditions of the two routes suggests that the coastal route was, by far, the best option and should be the focus of further archaeological investigation.

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Reliable and Unreliable Dating in the Absence of Radiocarbon

ALISTAIR PIKE, Ph.D.
Department of Anthropology
University of Bristol

Essentially I will cover current controversies in dating for alernative methods to 14C dating (e.g. ESR, U-series, OSL). To some extent I will draw upon dating examples from the americas, but I will also talk about dating debates about the first human colonization of Australia (where much of the dating evidence has been challenged) and european examples.

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Accidents of History: Identity Consciousness & the Modern Human Origins Debate

GEOFFREY A. CLARK, Ph.D.
Arizona State University

A moment's reflection will show that the various analytical units commonly used by paleolithic archaeologists in western Europe (e.g., Aurignacian, Mousterian) are 'accidents of history', created for the most part by French prehistorians between c. 1880 and c. 1940 in order to solve chronological problems in the years before absolute dating techniques had become available. Whether or not it makes sense to continue to use them as anything other than a vague and general lingua franca is addressed here, along with the question of what 'transitions' between these units might mean or imply about prehistoric human behavior. Since the units themselves are 'accidents of history', the transitions between them might not mean anything at all from the human behavioral ecology (HBE) perspective adopted by many American workers. Conflicts often arise in regard to pattern recognition and explanation when HBE advocates try to come to grips with interpretations by European scholars using a culture history (CH) approach. This confounding of mostly incommensurate conceptual frameworks becomes acute in modern human origins archaeology which, like NAGPRA, turns on aspects of identity-conscious behavior, and how far back in time it can be projected.

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Genesis, Genes, and Germs: The implications of genetics and epidemiology for initial and later Old World entries into the Americas.

STEPHEN C. JETT, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
University of California, Davis

Earliest New World humans show Ainu-Australoid affiliations and may have entered via coastal cruising in boats. Later Mongoloid entrants genetically swamped the earlier populations. Overall, these Mongoloid Americans relate genetically to populations in Siberia's Baikal/Altai region. However, American Indians display considerable genetic diversity, and geographical distributions of some genes suggest presumably watercraft-borne southeastern Asian inputs into tropical America. Mitochondrial-DNA haplotype X is European and may reflect Solutrean transatlantic ice-edge movements. Further, marker genes occur in geographical patterns that imply later inputs from Afro-Asiatic, southern Asian, and East Asian lands.

Several tropical human intestinal parasitic worms are pre-Columbian in the Americas and cannot have been introduced via the Arctic. They must have entered with human ocean-crossers.

The New World's freedom from most Old World infectious diseases (other than tuberculosis, treponematosis, and typhus) probably reflects the late emergence of some diseases, childhood-acquired immunity of ocean-crossers, and New World populations too small for endemism.

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The Final Frontier? Recent developments in radiocarbon dating: exploring what can and cannot be done using select examples from Palaeolithic archaeology.

PAUL PETTITT, Ph.D.
University of Sheffield
England

Radiocarbon dating can be said to be in a 'frontiers' phase, in which the applications of the technique are being pushed through new chemical and physcial developments that have broadened both the reliability and applicability of the technique, In recent years such developments have allowed the measurement of remarkably small samples in the microgram range, and have improved the ability of radiocarbon laboratories to remove contaminating substances, which have improved the accuracy in particular of early prehistoric samples. The refinement of statistical analyses and use of large 14C datasets as proxy demographic information has been revealing large-scale prehistoric population fluctuations that can be correlated to environmental change, and slow improvements in archaeologists' appreciation of the needs of 'chronometric hygeine' are beginning to have a cleansing effect on a large and old database. But frontiers are also about limits and barriers, and a number of pitfalls still exist. Archaeologists in particular still ignore some of the most basic problems that were identified in the 'pioneer' phase of radiocarbon development: the relevance of measurements to archaeological events, the effect of radiocarbon plateaux on accuracy, and the most ignored problem of all - the asumptions one must make about precision. Here, advances and limitations are explored using examples from prehistory, such as Neanderthal extinction and modern human expansion, the dating of cave art, and European Late Pleistocene human demography.

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Santa Rosa Island, CA: A case for mammoth extinction and the first human presence as synchronous events.

LARRY AGENBROAD, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Northern Arizona University

Recent investigations of the distribution and chronology of mammoth and human histories on Santa Rosa Island, provide evidence of contemporary late Pleistocene presence. The northern Channel Islands of California, San Miguel, Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz, have mammoth remains. Santa Rosa Island has the earliest absolute date for human presence. A pygmy mammoth bone has provided an absolute date, supported by charcoal dating, of mammoth presence at the time of first humans arrived on the island.

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Kennewick Man: The Science Behind the Court Decision

ALAN L. SCHNEIDER
Attorney
Portland, Oregon

The Kennewick Man illustrates the evidentiary complexities and difficulties created by repatriation claims involving ancient skeletal remains. The Secretary of the Interior determined that the Kennewick Man skeleton was Native American because of its age (more than 9000 years), and that it was culturally affiliated to a coalition of local tribes. The courts rejected his conclusions. They held that he failed to demonstrate that the skeleton had a special and significant genetic or cultural relationship to the tribal claimants or any other living American Indians. Finding proof of such a relationship with current scientific technologies may be impossible for skeletons as old as Kennewick Man.

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New Radiocarbon Dates for Clovis - Implications for the Peopling of the Americas

MIKE WATERS, Ph.D.
Department of Anthropology
Texas A&M University

See his Science Magazine article in the Feb. 23, 2007 issue.

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Megafauna, Man and Pathogens: International Travel in the Pleistocene

ALISON STENGER, Ph.D.
Institute for Archeological Studies
Portland, Oregon

The migration of animals during the Pleistocene is clearly represented in the fossil record. Travel by humans is similarly recorded through their skeletal remains and in the archaeological record of material culture change. While aDNA studies identify mammalian populations, genetic mutations aid in establishing the number of generations that separate species from their parent populations. Craniometrics in human populations and C13/N15 ratios in all populations further define lifeways and paleoenvironments. What isn't well understood are such issues as actual migration routes and species-specific extinctions. We know that numerous species migrated into and out of North America, but not the means by which this was accomplished in non-Arctic adapted mammals and during periods in which the Panamanian Land Bridge was not accessible. We also know that in much of the world, ancient humans disappeared from the skeletal record shortly after the megafaunal extinctions occurred. Was there a pathogenic link between these mammalian groups? What role did hyperdisease take in these extinction events? This paper explores these issues, as well as possible methods for testing both newer hypotheses and those that have been more widely circulated.

Other participants:

MARK FITZSIMMONS Past President Oregon Archeologicl Society

TRUDY LIEB Laboratory Director Institute for Archeological Studies

BETH WALTON Board member Friends of America's Past

*Conference papers will be published. Links to websites will be posted when the volume is available to purchase. The target is Summer 2007.