The application of sedimentary ancient DNA analysis to archaeological sediments for the reconstruction of palaeoenvironments

• Main Author: Hudson, Samuel Michael
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: University of Southampton 2023
• Subjects: permafrost
• Online Access: https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/476048/; https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/476048/1/S.Hudson_Thesis_Final_PDF3A.pdf; https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/476048/2/Final_thesis_submission_Examination_Mr_Samuel_Hudson.pdf

Sedimentary ancient DNA (hereafter sedaDNA) analysis is now a common method employed for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction in studies of paleoecology. It is most often applied as a palaeoecological technique when analysing lake sediments, marine sediments or permafrost in Arctic or Sub-Arctic locations, as these have proved favourable contexts for DNA preservation and stratigraphic stability. However, sedaDNA analysis is also beginning to be more widely applied to fluvial and terrestrial environments in temperate locations, which increase the opportunity for application of the technique to archaeological sites and sediments. If such applications can be shown to be successful, then sedaDNA analysis will be a powerful tool for understanding the archaeological record. This thesis focuses on the use of sedaDNA metabarcoding, and in one instance shotgun sequencing, to better understand the palaeoenvironments at significant UK Prehistoric archaeological sites. The three sites are: Blick Mead, Wiltshire, Killerby, North Yorkshire, and Seven Springs, Martlesham, Suffolk. Applications of sedaDNA to terrestrial contexts are not without their specific challenges and limitations, which will be discussed in detail later in this text, the method is therefore applied in conjunction with more traditional proxies such as plant macrofossils, mollusca, coleoptera, and pollen. These methods complement and, in some cases, overlap with the genetic evidence to provide a more complete assessment of biodiversity at any given site. As such, at each location chosen for study, sedaDNA was part of a multiproxy approach. In the three papers presented in this thesis, sedaDNA was shown to be preserved fairly well in temperate lacustrine, fluvial and terrestrial sediments and corroborated much of the existing archaeological faunal and lithic evidence found at each site. At all three sites, the molecular evidence increased the number of taxa than would have otherwise been found using only pollen and/or macrofossil data. SedaDNA improved ...