GL19

The past decade has demonstrated an impressive contribution from molecular methods for understanding the distribution and evolutionary history of a growing number of historical infectious diseases. With genomic analyses quickly becoming standard, analytical techniques have become increasingly specialised. This talk will explore the application next generation sequencing to the study of past disease, and will describe current state of the art techniques for detection of M. tuberculosis DNA in archaeological tissues. Using archaeological material from the precontact Americas and post-Medieval Europe as examples, I will offer perspectives on molecular preservation, as well as the challenges and benefits that come with genome-level ancient pathogen reconstruction and analysis.