ArcHives — combined palynological, genomic and lipid analysis of medieval wax seals
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ArcHives — combined palynological, genomic and lipid analysis of medieval wax seals. / Kasso, Tuuli M.; Enevold, Renée; Johns, Samuel; Rangel-Piñeros, Guillermo; Taurozzi, Alberto J.; Sutherland, Alister; Ramsøe, Max; Angelova, Lora V.; Roffet-Salque, Mélanie; Collins, Matthew J.; Carøe, Christian.
In: Heritage Science, Vol. 11, 11, 2023.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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T1 - ArcHives — combined palynological, genomic and lipid analysis of medieval wax seals
AU - Kasso, Tuuli M.
AU - Enevold, Renée
AU - Johns, Samuel
AU - Rangel-Piñeros, Guillermo
AU - Taurozzi, Alberto J.
AU - Sutherland, Alister
AU - Ramsøe, Max
AU - Angelova, Lora V.
AU - Roffet-Salque, Mélanie
AU - Collins, Matthew J.
AU - Carøe, Christian
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2023, The Author(s).
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Beeswax is a product of honeybees (Apis mellifera) and has been used extensively through time, especially as the primary component in medieval sealing wax for authenticating millions of documents. Today, these seals form large collections which, along with the historical information in the documents that the seals are attached to, could be a potential biomolecular archive for honeybees. Here, we investigate the possibility of obtaining biological information from medieval wax seals by performing a palynological and shotgun metagenomic analysis on eight medieval wax seal fragments. Our palynological results show that some pollen and fungal spores remain in the seals, albeit very little. Only one out of eight samples yielded enough DNA for sequencing. Moreover, only minor parts of the DNA reads could be taxonomically identified and were identified as plant and fungal DNA. These results demonstrate some potential for using wax seals as biological archives, but most importantly provides a framework for future studies, in addition to understanding further the degradation of seals as cultural heritage objects. We emphasize that future analyses should focus on other methodologies to retrieve data for historical context or alternatively improve molecular methods and screen sample collections broadly.
AB - Beeswax is a product of honeybees (Apis mellifera) and has been used extensively through time, especially as the primary component in medieval sealing wax for authenticating millions of documents. Today, these seals form large collections which, along with the historical information in the documents that the seals are attached to, could be a potential biomolecular archive for honeybees. Here, we investigate the possibility of obtaining biological information from medieval wax seals by performing a palynological and shotgun metagenomic analysis on eight medieval wax seal fragments. Our palynological results show that some pollen and fungal spores remain in the seals, albeit very little. Only one out of eight samples yielded enough DNA for sequencing. Moreover, only minor parts of the DNA reads could be taxonomically identified and were identified as plant and fungal DNA. These results demonstrate some potential for using wax seals as biological archives, but most importantly provides a framework for future studies, in addition to understanding further the degradation of seals as cultural heritage objects. We emphasize that future analyses should focus on other methodologies to retrieve data for historical context or alternatively improve molecular methods and screen sample collections broadly.
KW - Beeswax
KW - Conservation
KW - DNA
KW - Heritage science
KW - Palynology
KW - Sealing wax
U2 - 10.1186/s40494-022-00848-6
DO - 10.1186/s40494-022-00848-6
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85146340217
VL - 11
JO - Heritage Science
JF - Heritage Science
SN - 2050-7445
M1 - 11
ER -
ID: 335346762