Ancient DNA was extracted from nine leather and fur fragments of the clothes and quiver. These were enriched for mitochondrial DNA from which we sequenced six complete and three partially complete ancient mitogenomes. These results allowed us to map the furs and leathers to their species origin, with a haplotype resolution, for the Iceman’s hat, coat, leggings, loincloth, quiver and shoelace. This has enabled us to confirm the use of both wild and domestic animal sources, and their relation to modern populations. This high-resolution analysis further allowed us to authenticate the data by quantifying the degree of post mortem sequence damage (typical for ancient DNA) and to exclude contaminating sequences from subsequent analyses.. A whole mitochondria analysis of the Tyrolean Iceman’s furs and leather

The attire of the Tyrolean Iceman, a 5,300-year-old natural mummy from the Ötzal Italian Alps, provide a surviving example of ancient manufacturing technology. Research into his garments has however, been limited by ambiguity surrounding their source species. We present a targeted enrichment and sequencing of full mitochondrial genomes sampled from his clothes and quiver, which elucidates the species of production for nine fragments. Results indicate that the majority of the samples originate from domestic ungulate species (cattle, sheep and goat), whose recovered haplogroups are now at high frequency in today's domestic populations. Intriguingly, the hat and quiver samples were produced from wild species, brown bear and roe deer respectively. Combined, these results suggest that Copper Age populations made considered choices of clothing material from both wild and domestic populations available to them. Moreover, these results show the potential for the recovery of complete mitochondrial genomes from degraded prehistoric artefacts.