Project will study ancient sedimentary DNA in Interior Alaska
August 5, 2019
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.