Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) Collagen Fingerprinting for the Species Identification of Archaeological Bone Fragments

Archaeological bone assemblages are almost always dominated by high proportions of fragmentary remains rendering them unidentifiable by morphological analysis. To overcome this, a number of alternative techniques of species identification have been proposed, with one of the most promising of these methods being the use of protein fingerprinting. Amongst the most abundant proteins in vertebrates, collagen is one of the most dominant biomolecules in the archaeological record due to its persistence in ancient bone. Despite its highly-conserved triple-helical structure, which is important for a range of functions, the collagen molecule possesses enough amino acid sequence variation to be able to discriminate between closely related and morphologically similar species, such as sheep and goat. Through the use of soft-ionization mass spectrometry, the collagen that survives for thousands, and in some cases millions, of years can be fingerprinted to yield taxonomic identifications of archaeological bone. The technique has been applied to a wide range of fragmentary and/or morphologically similar taxa from various archaeological and paleontological assemblages. In response to the most commonly asked question of ZooMS, this study investigates the taxonomic resolution achievable using collagen fingerprinting across a range of vertebrate groups in order to allow potential users a means to estimate the applicability of the technique to different archaeofaunal assemblages worldwide. Given the scope of this volume, it will also consider the practicalities of ZooMS protein fingerprint analyses, including sampling issues and amenability to high-throughput analyses of large assemblages and subsequent curation of such collections.