ANCIENT DNA

The ancient DNA analysis will be crucial for determining whether and when mammoth populations declined by documenting potential population bottlenecks, i.e. sharp reductions in genetic variation. These data will also be helpful in determining if the studied mammoth bone accumulations were created naturally or caused by human hunting (Pečnerová et al. 2017). This is a key consideration for understanding the relationship between human and mammoth populations, as well as the disappearance of mammoth populations from this area of the Western Carpathians. These analyses will have unique power to assess intra-population variability, both within individual sites but also at a broader landscape level and will allow tracing essential changes in mammoth health, biology, and behaviour - a key issue for our research.

Laboratory aDNA analysies will be made in order to test if some specimens represent direct ancestors of more recent populations. Mitochondrial genomes will be used to infer female effective population size, confirm specimen ages and population relationships. Selection will be examined by modelling demographic histories and searching for gene regions that do not fit the model. The temporal nature of palaeogenomic data greatly improves the power to infer such allele frequency trajectories.

The aDNA analyses will reveal the genetic diversity of mammoth population and paired with the strontium isotopes reveal the range and directions of mammoth seasonal mobility patterns of individual specimens at the different sites, and in the assessed chronological periods.

TEAM: Love Dalén, David Diez-del-Molino, Hannah Moots, Barbara Wallner.

ISOTOPES

Seasonal mobility patterns of mammoth will be reconstructed using strontium, oxygen and carbon isotope analysis of tooth enamel. The resulting data will provide high resolution information about the seasonal mobility of mammoth and comparator prey species (reindeer, horse, wolf, fox). For the larger sites (Dolní Věstonice I, Kraków Spadzista), it is important to study the mobility patterns of males and females separately (identified using aDNA), and focus on mature adults; however we will also target very young individuals, to study how infant mammoths affected the mobility of the mother. Analysing multiple teeth from the same adult mammoth can potentially produce more than 10 consecutive years of mobility data per individual. Additionally, we will work on understanding the mammoth diet using carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of bone and teeth.

TEAM: Alex Pryor, Amy Horn, Dorothée Drucker, Chris Baumann.

SEASON OF DEATH

Season of death is determined via analysis of dental cementum, a well-established technique for investigating age and season of death in mammals. Dental cement is deposited annually around the roots of teeth in seasonal bands which distinguish periods of fast and slow growth, correlating with summer and winter seasons respectively.
The season of death of human prey species (reindeer, horse, fox, wolf) will be studied using dental cementum analysis of thin sections prepared at the University of Exeter, the Histology Lab at AU Brno, and Archaeozoological Lab in Kraków.

TEAM: Alex Pryor, Amy Horn, Soňa Boriova.

SIZE AND DENSITY OF MAMMOTH POPULATIONS

Estimates of the size and density of ancient populations will be made in accordance with the Cologne Protocol at various spatial scales. Furtheromore, population sizes and densities will be modelled against the background of palaeoenvironmental data.

TEAM: Andreas Maier.