TY - JOUR
T1 - Ancient DNA analysis of a nineteenth century tobacco pipe from a Maryland slave quarter
AU - Schablitsky, Julie M.
AU - Witt, Kelsey E.
AU - Madrigal, Jazmín Ramos
AU - Ellegaard, Martin R.
AU - Malhi, Ripan S.
AU - Schroeder, Hannes
N1 - Funding Information:
JMS thanks Rockbridge Academy, Anne Arundel County, the Transportation Enhancement Program, the Federal Highway Administration, and the Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration, for supporting the archaeological excavation of the quarter site. In addition, we acknowledge historian Janice Hayes-Williams and the commitment of the Burley and Brogden descendent community; specifically, Nancy Daniels, Pam Brogden, Shelley Evans, and Wanda Watts, in remembering and honoring their ancestors through participation in the archaeology project. We also thank the editor and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. The research was supported in part by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the ERC Synergy Project NEXUS1492 (grant agreement no. 319209 ). HS was supported by HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) through the joint research programme “Uses of the Past” and the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 649307 .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2019/5
Y1 - 2019/5
N2 - Archaeologists often struggle with the challenge of linking historic-period artifact assemblages with specific communities. In particular, small home sites discovered on historic plantations are often difficult to identify as an African American or white tenant house since the material culture appears similar. The discipline also struggles with how to identify the expression of specific West African cultures in their archaeological assemblages. Here, we discuss how DNA was successfully extracted and analyzed from a clay tobacco pipe stem collected from an African American slave quarter in Maryland, USA, and what this information can and cannot reveal about the people present at the site. We successfully identified DNA from a woman, and genome-wide analyses revealed she was closely related to Mende living in present-day Sierra Leone, West Africa. The ability to recover genetic data from personal artifacts now provides archaeologists a viable tool to address questions about communities and ancestral origins. Furthermore, these findings hold the potential to connect living descendants with their ancestors’ homes.
AB - Archaeologists often struggle with the challenge of linking historic-period artifact assemblages with specific communities. In particular, small home sites discovered on historic plantations are often difficult to identify as an African American or white tenant house since the material culture appears similar. The discipline also struggles with how to identify the expression of specific West African cultures in their archaeological assemblages. Here, we discuss how DNA was successfully extracted and analyzed from a clay tobacco pipe stem collected from an African American slave quarter in Maryland, USA, and what this information can and cannot reveal about the people present at the site. We successfully identified DNA from a woman, and genome-wide analyses revealed she was closely related to Mende living in present-day Sierra Leone, West Africa. The ability to recover genetic data from personal artifacts now provides archaeologists a viable tool to address questions about communities and ancestral origins. Furthermore, these findings hold the potential to connect living descendants with their ancestors’ homes.
KW - African diaspora
KW - Ancient DNA
KW - Genetic ancestry
KW - Historical archaeology
KW - Slavery
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jas.2019.02.006
DO - 10.1016/j.jas.2019.02.006
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85062725593
SN - 0305-4403
VL - 105
SP - 11
EP - 18
JO - Journal of Archaeological Science
JF - Journal of Archaeological Science
ER -