Ancient human remains identification

This study links archaeological finds of unidentified human remains in Québec to genealogical individuals, by way of ancient and modern DNA. The genealogy of the quasi-entire French-Canadian population of Québec, from the founding of the colony in 1608 to 1960, is documented in the BALSAC database. Linking unidentified archeological human remains of this founder population to its genealogy is of utmost interest for bioarcheology, ancient human genome reconstruction, epidemiology, human population micro-evolution, and related fields of enquiry. The goal of this project was to develop a method for identifying archaeological human remains, by associating recovered genetic data with the whole-population genealogical BALSAC database. We tested this approach by genotyping the remains of six anonymous individuals exhumed from four historical cemeteries.