Abstract
The attire of the Tyrolean Iceman, a 5,300-year-old natural mummy from the Ötzal Italian Alps, provides a surviving example of ancient manufacturing technologies. Research into his garments has however, been limited by ambiguity surrounding their source species. Here we present a targeted enrichment and sequencing of full mitochondrial genomes sampled from his clothes and quiver, which elucidates the species of production for nine fragments. Results indicate that the majority of the samples originate from domestic ungulate species (cattle, sheep and goat), whose recovered haplogroups are now at high frequency in today’s domestic populations. Intriguingly, the hat and quiver samples were produced from wild species, brown bear and roe deer respectively. Combined, these results suggest that Copper Age populations made considered choices of clothing material from both the wild and domestic populations available to them. Moreover, these results show the potential for the recovery of complete mitochondrial genomes from degraded prehistoric artefacts.
Highlights
Previous PCR work targeting ancient DNA fragments extracted from leather and furs have reported, in most cases, poor endogenous content[10]
Conventional PCR based sanger sequencing of aDNA is further restricted by low endogenous DNA content, small fragment sizes and the co-extraction of contaminating molecules that are typical of ancient material[15,16]
The study of ancient animal genetic variation can uncover novel variety or distributions of ancient populations that would not be possible solely from the analysis of modern genetic data, as intensive selective pressure and migrations have shuffled European phylogeography[30]. This has shown that contemporary genetic distributions of European livestock are not necessarily representative of ancient distributions, such as during the Copper Age or Neolithic[31]
Summary
Previous PCR work targeting ancient DNA (aDNA) fragments extracted from leather and furs have reported, in most cases, poor endogenous content[10]. PCR based genetic analyses of hair shafts, recovered from more recent excavations of the Iceman find site have succeeded in further characterising the clothes; providing a species identification and even comparative phylogenies with modern populations[13,14] These samples are not directly associated with particular parts of the Iceman’s clothing, and as such lack this critical piece of information for the evaluation of material usage by Copper Age individuals. We report a targeted mitochondrial enrichment of DNA extracted from six articles of the Iceman’s personal effects: shoelace, hat, loincloth, coat, leggings, and quiver We use these data to provide a discussion of Copper Age leather production and to investigate the relationship between the ancient animals and their current day populations
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