Project will study ancient sedimentary DNA in Interior Alaska

August 5, 2019

University Relations

UAF researchers have received a National Science Foundation grant to conduct environmental analyses of ancient DNA samples.

The $91,386 grant analyzes ancient DNA preserved in loess to record the resources available to humans and how they were used.

The project compares the ancient DNA from Interior Alaska loess profiles containing archaeological remains with the ancient DNA from lake sediments. Together the results will shed light on the resources available to people (found in lake sediment DNA) as well as the resources actually used (found in loess DNA).

Analysis of ancient sedimentary DNA is a technique that hasn’t been tested on unfrozen loess. The tests in the NSF project will form the basis of a much larger interdisciplinary program to document resource availability and their use by humans in Interior Alaska since the initial peopling of Alaska, about 14,000 years ago.

Nancy Bigelow, a researcher at the College of Natural Science and Mathematics and director of the Alaska Quaternary Center, serves as principal investigator. Co-principal investigators are Mary Edwards, a professor of physical geography at the University of Southampton and research affiliate at UAF; Ben Potter, a UAF associate professor of anthropology; and Joshua Reuther, UAF associate professor of anthropology and curator of archaeology at the University of Alaska Museum of the North.