A new perspective on studying burial environment before archaeological excavation: analyzing bacterial community distribution by high-throughput sequencing.
Burial conditions play a crucial role in archaeological heritage preservation. Especially, the microorganisms were considered as the leading causes which incurred degradation and vanishment of historic materials. In this article, we analyzed bacterial diversity and community structure from M1 of Wangshanqiao using 16 S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. The results indicated that microbial communities in burial conditions were diverse among four different samples. The samples from the robber hole varied most obviously in community structure both in Alpha and Beta diversity. In addition, the dominant phylum in different samples were Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria and Bacteroidetes, respectively. Moreover, the study implied that historical materials preservation conditions had connections with bacterial community distribution. At the genus level, Acinetobacter might possess high ability in degrading organic culture heritage in burial conditions, while Bacteroides were associated closely with favorable preservation conditions. This method contributes to fetch information which would never recover after excavation, and it will help to explore microbial degradation on precious organic culture heritage and further our understanding of archaeological burial environment. The study also indicates that robbery has a serious negative impact on burial remains.
Department of History of Science and Scientific Archaeology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026 China.
Jinjin
J
Xu
Department of History of Science and Scientific Archaeology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026 China.|Jingzhou Preservation Centre of Cultural Relics, Jingzhou, 434020 China.
Yanfei
Y
Wei
Jingzhou Museum, Jingzhou, 434020 China.
Hanqing
H
Jia
Chengdu Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Chengdu, 610000 China.
Lin
L
Xiao
Department of History of Science and Scientific Archaeology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026 China.
Decai
D
Gong
D001106:Archaeology; D001419:Bacteria / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics; D044822:Biodiversity; D002048:Burial; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; D006863:Hydrogen-Ion Concentration; D054892:Metagenome; D056186:Metagenomics / Q000379:methods; D064307:Microbiota; D010802:Phylogeny; D054712:Salinity; D012987:Soil / Q000737:chemistry; D012988:Soil Microbiology; D014867:Water / Q000737:chemistry
D012987:Soil; D014867:Water