The arid climate of many regions within Central Asia often leads to excellent
archaeological preservation, especially in sealed funerary contexts, allowing
for ancient DNA analyses. While geneticists have looked at human remains,
clothes, tools, and other burial objects are often neglected. In this paper,
we present the results of an ancient DNA study on Bronze Age leather objects
excavated from tombs of the Wupu cemetery in the Hami Oasis and Yanghai
cemetery in the Turpan Oasis, both in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of
northwestern China. In addition to species identification of goat (Capra
aegagrus/hircus), sheep (Ovis orientalis/aries), and cattle (Bos
primigenius/taurus), mitochondrial haplogroups were determined for several
samples. Our results show that Bronze Age domesticated goats and sheep from
the Hami and Turpan oases possessed identical or closely related haplotypes to
modern domestic animals of this area. The absence of leather produced from
wild animals emphasizes the importance of animal husbandry in the cultures of
Wupu and Yanghai