You'd expect an archeologist to dress like Indiana Jones: leather jacket, dusty fedora, wrinkled khakis and a weathered tan. So why are five UC Davis anthropology graduate students - some quite pale - wearing plastic booties, lab coats and hair covers and dealing with chemical solutions and computer images?
Forsaking khakis for genes, these students have entered a new academic field called "archeogenetics." Each has staked out territory across the United States and into Mexico to collectively answer questions about when humans first came to the New World and how and when they dispersed. The UC Davis program, directed by ancient-DNA expert David Glenn Smith, is one of the two biggest in the nation studying the prehistory of Native Americans with test tubes and gels rather than an archeologist's pick and sifter.
"Most people think of studying DNA as a way of solving problems of the future, but we're using it to shed light on events in the past," said Ripan Malhi '94, M.A. '98, Ph.D. '01, the second student to finish his doctorate with ancient DNA studies in Smith's fledgling program.
In just the past six months, Smith and his proteges have published a number of studies that have other scholars taking notice.
Among the UC Davis findings: The Nevada's prehistoric population looks like modern Native Americans from California's Central Valley, but does not genetically resemble the Utes, Paiutes and Shoshone tribes now living in Nevada. The study - the first to use DNA testing to substantiate a theory about Indian migration patterns in the area - adds weight to a determination in summer 2000 by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management that "Spirit Cave Man," a mummy housed in the Nevada State Museum for nearly 60 years, is not culturally affiliated with present-day Native Americans in the area who want to repatriate the remains.
"Genetic studies are valuable, in my estimation," Smith says, "because of their ability to add consistency to hypotheses created from other anthropological studies in comparative languages, ancient artifacts, oral traditions and skeletal measurements."
The study of ancient DNA is a field still in its infancy, with many technical innovations still required for it to proceed much further. The biggest technical challenge is dealing with contamination from modern DNA. In addition, when extracting DNA from ancient bones, the genetic material is usually highly damaged and analysis is far more difficult than working with modern DNA.
The field has another more immediate obstacle - politics. A graves protection bill was moving through the California Legislature at press time that would require state museums and universities to return collections of Indian remains and artifacts to affiliated tribes before July 2002 and assess fines on agencies that don't cooperate. Anthropologists will be able to study these artifacts only with the expressed approval of the tribes that have the repatriated items, but getting that approval may be difficult.
Native Americans have many objections to the scientific study of their ancestors, explains Martha Macri, professor and former chair of Native American studies as well professor of anthropology at UC Davis. From a cultural and religious standpoint, most Native Americans in North America have traditions that prohibit the violation of human remains.
Many tribes also believe they originated in North America, as supported by their creation stories and object to researchers who do not respect these beliefs. "Scientists sometimes think they know more about us than we know about ourselves," Macri says.
As a linguist who studies ancient Mayan hieroglyphs as well as the preservation of dying languages, Macri sympathized with the concerns.
"But I'm very intellectually curious and want to know the answers to prehistory," she says.
Because she has served on the doctoral committees of some of Smith's students, Macri says she is familiar with how carefully they are to work only with legally obtained materials and to carry out their research work within the federally mandated rules.
As part of their education, graduate students Jason Eshleman and Brian Kemp have been learning about Native American objections by visiting Clear Lake Indians involved with the federal Native American Graves Protection Repatriation Act.
One of their contacts, a former Clear Lake NAGPRA tribal project director, offered her own DNA as a modern comparison to the ancient groups the Davis group studies.
Knowing about the obstacles has the students thinking of how to diversify their careers.
Kemp is eyeing the study of ancient animal bones found in human camps. The ideas is to track human migrations by looking at DNA from animals that travel with humans.
With a fresh Ph.D. under his belt, Malhi has chosen to become a postdoctoral researcher at a human genetics lab at the University of Michigan, where he will be looking at diseases associated with modern Native Americans, such as obesity and diabetes.
"My background in anthropology will be very useful in studying the genetic components to human diseases today because prehistoric events have strongly shaped the gene pool of modern Native Americans," he says.