Brown, Tamara (Archaeological Sciences Laboratories, University of Queensland)

Archaeology and Capillary Electrophoresis: A Case of Haemoglobin Identification

The ability to perform DNA analysis on ancient organic material has provided archaeologists with a powerful tool to help understand the past. Unfortunately some remains do not contain sufficient DNA for analysis. Thus to prevent wasting time and money a preliminary test to indicate the possible survival of sufficient DNA was needed. Amino acid racemization has been proffered as this preliminary technique. However recent evidence indicates that this method is not as reliable as it first seemed (Collins et al. 1999). This study investigated the possible use of capillary electrophoresis (CE) as a means of identifying proteins in ancient samples. For if proteins can be detected then DNA, in sufficient quantities for analysis, should also be present. However, this is not the only use of CE. This technique can be used to provide independent identification of residues and work as a complementary means of analysis to a number of existing techniques.

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