TASK 1: Collection of archaeological remains of Bos

AIM: To collect bones and/or teeth of Bos from various periods  ­  prehistoric and historic  –  across Iberia/North Africa. This large collection will help offset challenges associated ancient DNA retrieval from archaeological remains.

The sampling strategy is designed to allow hypothesis testing and answer key questions about local domestication of Iberian cattle and/or admixture with aurochs, and improvement.

We will work in straight collaboration with project partners, namely archaeologists and zooarchaeologists, to expand our collection of Bos remains from Iberia and North Africa representative of key historic periods/sites.  This will allow to perform phylochronological genetic analyses at the population level and of single copy nuclear ancient DNA to investigate improvement (links to Tasks 4,5,6). Within the first 4 months, specific missions to collect samples in Portugal, Spain and North Africa are foreseen.

Zooarchaeological remains will be identified to species using the osteological reference collection (available at the Archaeosciences Laboratory, DGPC/InBIO, Lisbon) and standard osteometric measurements will be taken by zooarchaeologists S. Davis and C. Detry.

Sub­sampling for DNA extraction will be performed in the ancient DNA-dedicated facility of Stockholm University following appropriate methods.