Palaeogenetics and cultural heritage. Species determination and STR-genotyping from ancient DNA in art and artefacts

In recent years, a few papers have addressed the palaeogenetic analysis of cultural, historical and archaeological artefacts. We provide an overview of the individual published articles and then describe the results we had in the framework of a palaeogenetic research project involving various historical and prehistoric finds from museums, archaeological excavations, and libraries. We show that ancient DNA can be isolated from most of the various biomaterials (leather, parchment, glue, binding media, crusted organic plant remains in containers). Short pieces of degraded DNA are used, on the one hand, to determine the organic remnant’s genus/species of origin, and on the other hand, to create the genetic profile of an individual animal, using STR-typing. This permits us to determine whether two fragments belong to the same find, as well as providing purely biological data on the animal and its population. Moreover, STR-profiles can help to prove the authenticity of data from less variable loci like mitochondrial sequences.