Species identification of ancient Lithuanian fish remains using collagen fingerprinting

Abstract

Morphological identification of ancient bone is often problematic due to heavy fragmentation that generally influences zooarchaeological assemblages. Fish bones are more taphonomically sensitive than those of other vertebrates as they are typically smaller and less biomineralised. Thus, taxonomic identification based on the preservation of morphological features is often extremely limited and can reduce or eliminate the usefulness of an assemblage for inferring taxon information. Currently, one of the most time--and cost--efficient methods of achieving faunal identity from ancient bone is by the collagen fingerprinting technique known as ZooMS (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry). ZooMS harnesses the potential of preserved collagen, which is the most dominant and time-stable protein in bone. In this research, ZooMS is applied to ancient Baltic region fish assemblages that are between 500 and 6000 years old in order to define species identity and construct assemblage compositions. Alongside inferences into environmental and biological shifts from the Neolithic era to present day in the Baltic region, we demonstrate for the first time the ability to distinguish between recently diverged members of the Salmo (salmon) and Scophthalmus (turbot) genera. ZooMS analysis highlights 7% of the collagen-containing assemblage as having been morphologically identified incorrectly and has facilitated taxonomic refinement of a further 28% of samples, including some of the morphologically indeterminate bone fragments. This research emphasises the great potential of ZooMS in identifying ichthyoarchaeological bone remains to species--level, and provides a case for the use of collagen fingerprinting in contributing to baseline fisheries and ecological data to inform modern management.

Collagen fingerprinting and the Chumash billfish fishery, Santa Barbara Channel, California, USA

“…Collagen fingerprinting has emerged as an important technique for archaeologists and Quaternary scientists, and this molecular tool is particularly useful for zooarchaeological identifications. Although several recent studies have demonstrated the value of this technique, many of these focus on terrestrial (Buckley et al 2016(Buckley et al , 2017 or marine mammals (Buckley et al 2014;Evans et al 2016;Hufthammer et al 2018), with comparatively limited attention, albeit growing, to fishes (Richter et al 2011;Harvey et al 2018). Our study is the first to use collagen fingerprinting for species identification of billfish, and points to the potential value of these data for helping understand prehistoric fisher encounter rates with various species and, if combined with archaeological evidence, ritual, and cultural variables.…”

“…1). Collagen fingerprinting (Buckley et al 2009) or ZooMS (short for Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry; Buckley et al 2008) is an important and currently under-utilized technique that has been used to address a variety of zooarchaeological questions relating to species identification (e.g., Buckley and Kansa 2011;Buckley et al 2017a), including the discovery of the remains of extinct species (Buckley et al 2017b;Hufthammer et al 2018), but few studies have applied the technique to fish remains (Richter et al 2011;Harvey et al 2018). We demonstrate the value of ZooMS for analyzing archaeological fish bones and for addressing questions of broad significance to environmental archaeology and historical ecology, including the ecological versus cultural drivers of the Chumash billfish fishery.…”

Preserved collagen reveals species identity in archaeological marine turtle bones from Caribbean and Florida sites

“…Collagen (I) is a slowly evolving biomolecule whereby approximately one amino acid substitution occurs every 1–8 Myr depending upon the vertebrate class, with fish collagen (I) yielding the greatest variation, followed closely by herpetofauna [33]. To date, no subspecies have been shown to differ in their collagen fingerprints, including in fishes [23].…”

An aid to the identification of fish bones from southeast Arabia: The influence of reference collections on taxonomic diversity

“…Initial work on the analysis of vertebrae shape has already shown to differentiate fish occupying different habitat niches (Samper Carro et al, 2018), and the method has potential to aid our identification methodologies further. Another fruitful avenue that may add to the range of tools for species determinations is ZooMS (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry) peptide fingerprinting (Harvey et al, 2018; Richter et al, 2011, 2020), but more species need to be added to the database of collagen spectra to be a useful technique in southeast Arabia.…”