Abstract
Burial conditions play a crucial role in archaeological heritage preservation. Especially, the microorganisms were considered as the leading causes which incurred degradation and vanishment of historic materials. In this article, we analyzed bacterial diversity and community structure from M1 of Wangshanqiao using 16 S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. The results indicated that microbial communities in burial conditions were diverse among four different samples. The samples from the robber hole varied most obviously in community structure both in Alpha and Beta diversity. In addition, the dominant phylum in different samples were Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria and Bacteroidetes, respectively. Moreover, the study implied that historical materials preservation conditions had connections with bacterial community distribution. At the genus level, Acinetobacter might possess high ability in degrading organic culture heritage in burial conditions, while Bacteroides were associated closely with favorable preservation conditions. This method contributes to fetch information which would never recover after excavation, and it will help to explore microbial degradation on precious organic culture heritage and further our understanding of archaeological burial environment. The study also indicates that robbery has a serious negative impact on burial remains.
Highlights
Microbial community variations in buried soils can be investigated with the development of molecular fingerprinting techniques such as denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE)[5], but the number of bands on the DGGE gel is less, which limits the overall understanding of microbial community composition[6]
Bacteria inhabiting in the soil subsurface plays a vital role in organic matter decomposition, especially when soil depth is increasing[14]
Soil and liquid bacteria community structure of the No 1 Wangshanqiao Chu tomb were studied using 16 S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing, which broadens the understanding of burial conditions
Summary
Microbial community variations in buried soils can be investigated with the development of molecular fingerprinting techniques such as denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE)[5], but the number of bands on the DGGE gel is less, which limits the overall understanding of microbial community composition[6]. The survival of the organic remains raised the concerns on studying the burial environment. Our samples were excavated from No 1 Wangshanqiao Chu tomb (475–221BC) in Jingzhou, Hubei Province in 2015, using standard coring methods. The objective of this work is to analyze bacterial diversity and community structure from M1 of Wangshanqiao using 16 S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. To our knowledge, this method hasn’t been reported in the study of archaeological burial environment. It is expected to distinguish diversity of bacterial communities in situ to find potential important cultural information and develop a better understanding of archaeological remains, as well as explore the influence of microorganisms on degradation
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