Abstract
The success and failure of past cultures across the Arctic was tightly coupled to the ability of past peoples to exploit the full range of resources available to them. There is substantial evidence for the hunting of birds, caribou and seals in prehistoric Greenland. However, the extent to which these communities relied on fish and cetaceans is understudied because of taphonomic processes that affect how these taxa are presented in the archaeological record. To address this, we analyse DNA from bulk bone samples from 12 archaeological middens across Greenland covering the Palaeo-Inuit, Norse and Neo-Inuit culture. We identify an assemblage of 42 species, including nine fish species and five whale species, of which the bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) was the most commonly detected. Furthermore, we identify a new haplotype in caribou (Rangifer tarandus), suggesting the presence of a distinct lineage of (now extinct) dwarfed caribou in Greenland 3,000 years ago.
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Data availability
Fastq files for both shotgun and metabarcoding data were deposited in the European Nucleotide Archive under accession no. PRJEB55117.
Code availability
The code for taxonomic assignment of ASVs is available from https://github.com/frederikseersholm/blast_getLCA. The code for taxonomic assignment of shotgun metagenomic data is available from https://github.com/frederikseersholm/getLCA.
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Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project DP160104473 and Forrest Research Foundation (to F.V.S.). Data analysis was carried out with support from the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre. Furthermore, we would like to thank H. Matthiesen, the ‘REMAINS of Greenland’ project funded by the VELUX FOUNDATION, K. Gregersen and the Natural History Museum of Denmark. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.
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F.V.S., M.B., A.J.H. and M.M. designed the study. F.V.S. and H.H. collected samples. F.V.S conducted laboratory work, analysed the data and produced the figures. A.B.G, C.K.M., J.F.J and J.H. provided interpretation of the archaeological context. F.V.S. wrote the manuscript with input from all co-authors.
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Supplementary Information
Supplementary Figs. 1 and 2, Notes 1–3 and Tables 1–13.
Supplementary Data 1
Taxonomic assignments of all ASVs analysed in this study.
Supplementary Data 2
Reference haplotypes for bowhead whales. Accession numbers and reference for bowhead whale (B. mysticetus) haplotypes used in the haplotype network in Fig. 3. *Singleton haplotypes not included in Fig. 3.
Supplementary Data 3
List of all species considered for taxonomic assignments. The column on mitochondrial genome indicates whether at least one full mitochondrial genome is available for a given species/genus. The columns 16S and 12S indicate whether reference sequences are available for the regions analysed with metabarcoding primers for a given species/genus. *Only 12Sv5 region is available, not the 12SAH region.
Supplementary Data 4
Supplementary Data 4. Taxonomic assignments of shotgun reads mapping to the database of full mitochondrial genomes.
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Seersholm, F.V., Harmsen, H., Gotfredsen, A.B. et al. Ancient DNA provides insights into 4,000 years of resource economy across Greenland. Nat Hum Behav 6, 1723–1730 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01454-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01454-z
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