Genomics and archaeology of reindeer domestication and its impact on the Northern human diets and ecosystems of the past

The project is a part of research programme of a newly established Norwegian Centre for Arctic Ecosystem Genomics (ArcEcoGen) at the Arctic University Museum, UiT. ArcEcoGen centre focuses on the combined effect of humans, climate, and biota on northern ecosystem dynamics in the past, present, and future using environmental DNA (eDNA) techniques.

The shift from hunting to the domestication of reindeer in Arctic Europe is a multifaceted human and socio-ecological story that has yet to be fully unraveled. However, there are opportunities to tackle both cultural and environmental aspects from well-preserved archaeological materials in Northern Norway using new techniques. This project is connected to an existing PhD studying the genomic basis of eco-evolutionary responses to changing environments in arctic plant-herbivore systems but expand more into human interactions using sedaDNA and archeological data. It addresses the relative importance of reindeer, sheep, and other domesticates (including food crops and wild plants) as well as fishing and hunting in the Arctic diets of the past in different cultural contexts. The study material will potentially include farm mound deposits in Northern Norway and Sami farm sites in Tysfjord where remains of reindeer and other domesticates occur in secure archeological contexts.

The approach is multi-tiered using several genomic techniques including metabarcoding, shotgun sequencing and possibly target-capture. This may be supplemented by using genome-wide SNP genotyping of suitable reindeer samples. Both the full domesticated and wild assemblages as well as reindeer provenance/lineage relate strongly to the cultural history of reindeer exploitation and lifeways. An overarching question of great ecological and cultural importance is the representation of reindeer as a keystone species over time during which it was semi-domesticated.