J Archaeol Sci 34 (12)

To monitor the relationship between sample size and the magnitude of a variable of interest, archaeologists have constructed three distinct kinds of what in ecology are known as species area curves (SACs). Sampling to redundancy SACs involves adding successive samples cumulatively to determine if the information provided by new samples is unique or redundant with information provided by earlier (smaller) samples. Rarefaction SACs involve pooling multiple samples and then rarifying the pooled sample -- making it smaller probabilistically -- so that the originally large but rarified sample may be compared with originally small samples. Regression SACs determine if there is a significant statistical relationship between samples of different sizes and the magnitude of the variable of interest per sample. Each of the three SACs used by archaeologists has a distinct analytical purpose.

The paper aims to compliment and add relevant information to Bouwman and Brown's and Barnes and Thomas' discussion concerning the inability to apply ancient DNA techniques to study venereal syphilis in past human populations. The authors' approach utilized fifteen different human specimens from different geographies and different temporal periods: eight samples come from medically diagnosed individuals archived during the American Civil War period; six originate from the United Kingdom and predate 1492 with four of these samples having been previously analyzed by Bouwman and Brown, and one sample comes from historic Canada. Human mitochondrial and amelogenin DNA, as well as several genes from the Treponema organism were analyzed revealing the relatively good preservation of human multi-copy and single copy DNA but not treponemal DNA. The study also incorporates a unique molecular experiment using rabbits infected with venereal syphilis to help illustrate that treponemal DNA disseminates to bone early during the first stages of infection but is not present in later stages of the disease using the techniques presented in this study.

The authors present the results of a pilot study investigating the potential for geochemically sourcing `black chert', a material with similar qualities to flint but of inland limestone origin, using ICP-AES, ICP-MS and LA-ICP-MS. Several geological sources of black chert are known, and it is commonly present at upland Mesolithic sites along the Pennine chain. Four geological sources were sampled and analysed, along with a small sample of black chert artefacts from two upland Pennine archaeological sites. The results demonstrate that the four sampled sources can be easily differentiated from one another chemically. This research reveals the potential to apply this approach at a larger scale; the archaeological sample together with the source results indicate that additional sources will need to be identified and sampled before such data can be applied to address current questions of the Mesolithic of northern England.