Postcard from the Field: Lauren Clark, Canada

From Lauren Clark (MA Student) Simon Fraser University, Canada: Lauren Clark has just completed the first year of her master’s in the Archaeology department at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. She is broadly interested in the applications and methods employed in ancient sediment DNA (sedaDNA) studies in service of both archaeology and conservation paleobiology. To combine her interests, she has chosen to focus her thesis research on comparing the efficacy of various extraction methods of sedaDNA among stored sediment samples obtained from the Bridge River archaeological site in interior BC. In order to acquire primarily ancient genetic material, the extraction of DNA from sediment will take place in a positive pressure lab facility and will follow strict clean-room protocols as Lauren is demonstrating in this photo in Simon Fraser’s ancient DNA lab.