AGPM 10 (10th meeting of the ICAZ Archaeozoology, Genetics, Proteomics & Morphometrics Working Group)

Oral Paper

Emergence and diversity of sheep breeds in Southwest Asia: Paleoproteomics, a new challenge?

F. Bray (1), M. Vuillien (3), J. Chahoud (4-5), H. Davoudi (6), H. Fathi (6), R. Berthon (3), A. Mohaseb (3), M. Albesso (4), M. Mashkour (3-6), E. Vila (4) 

1: Miniaturisation pour la Synthèse, l'Analyse et la Protéomique - UAR 3290
Université de Lille : UAR3290, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique : UAR3290 / USR3290, Université de Lille. Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique
2: Culture et Environnements, Préhistoire, Antiquité, Moyen-Age (CEPAM)
Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique : UMR7264, Université Côte d'Azur : UMR7264
3: Archéozoologie, archéobotanique : sociétés, pratiques et environnements
Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique : UMR7209, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
4: ARCHEORIENT - Environnements et sociétés de l'Orient ancien
Université Lumière - Lyon 2, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique : UMR5133, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
5 : Department of Archaeology, Lebanese University
6: Bioarchaoleogy Laboratory, Central Laboratory, University of Tehran

In the framework of the ANR EvoSheep project an exploratory study in paleoproteomics was carried out on wild and domestic sheep and goat bones from 14 Neolithic to Late Bronze Age sites distributed from Northern Levant to Eastern Iranian Plateau. The objectives were 1) to quantify the preservation degree of peptide chains contained in the COLA1 and COLA2 to confirm and complete the taxonomic identifications for geometric morphometrics analy- ses 2) to study the amino acid mutations sequences in the specific peptide chains and their evolution over time, from the wild ancestor to the first sheep breeds.
This work is based on 70 samples, of which 67 correspond to archaeological specimens and 3 to modern species. Between 1 and 5 mg of bone powder was collected and treated according to the preparation protocol of Bray et al. (2023). Identifications were realized by MALDI- FTICR and LC-MS/MS.
MALDI-FTICR analysis identified collagen in 100% of the samples, validated and completed taxonomic identifications. The results correlated with 97% of the archaeozoologists iden- tifications. Collagen quality was measured using the percentage of glutamine deamidation in modern (1.6% +/- 0.5%) and ancient (11% +/- 2.4%) samples. The results highlight a very good preservation of collagen in archaeological bones despite taphonomic conditions of burial, storage and handling.The LC-MS/MS analyses performed identified more than 70% of the type I collagen sequence. Post-translational modifications were observed such as hydroxylations, acetylations but no mutation has been observed at this stage, but future investigations must be conducted to confirm this observation.