Pubdate: Sun, 03 Mar 2002
Source: Columbus Dispatch (OH)
Copyright: 2002 The Columbus Dispatch
Contact:  http://www.dispatch.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/93
Author: Scott Sonner, Associated Press

OLD WEST LIFE

VIRGINIA CITY, Nev. -- Archaeologists searching under floorboards in this 
19th-century mining town are using DNA testing in a way it's never been 
used before to learn secrets about the Old West.

Some of the tests might tell a story of the frontier rarely seen in 
Westerns or on the old Bonanza television series that helped make Virginia 
City famous.

The DNA used for the tests was found in traces of morphine residue on a 
125- year-old glass hypodermic syringe discovered beneath a small home. 
Researchers think they've found either a drug den or the office of a doctor 
who treated prostitutes and their customers on the edge of the town's 
rollicking red-light district during the 1860s and 1870s.

It is thought to be the first time DNA residue has been extracted from 
historical artifacts other than human remains, according to independent 
experts and leaders of the joint research by Portland State University in 
Oregon and the Nevada State Historic Preservation Office.

They say the technique will help give historians a better glimpse into 
daily life on the Western frontier.

"Hollywood has made us think of Virginia City as a Bonanza-type setting, 
and even tourism today has carried that theme," said Julie Schablitsky, an 
archaeologist in Portland State's Urban Studies and Planning Department. 
"As archaeologists and historians, we need to set the record straight."

"This is an area where people from all over the world toiled hard above and 
below the ground. . . . Back then you could get morphine and a syringe at 
the local pharmacy. It was not a big deal," she said.

Experts say the ability to use DNA to link gender, race and number of 
people to specific personal items recovered at archaeological sites is a 
breakthrough.

"Schablitsky's innovative application of DNA analysis opens up an entirely 
new way of documenting and understanding their lives from the material 
things that they left behind," said Donald Hardesty, an anthropology 
professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, who specializes in the 
American West.

At its peak in the 1860s, Virginia City was "one of the great mining 
districts of the world, one of the richest places ever found in human 
history," said Ron James, Nevada's historic preservation officer.

"We have a very good idea from what was written at the time of what it was 
like to be white, rich and male in 19th-century Virginia City. But the rest 
of the story has to be pieced together by whatever means," James said.

In the case of the syringe and six associated needles, the DNA testing 
confirmed they'd been used by at least four people, both men and women, 
most likely including at least one black.

Earlier research has established that Virginia City, with a population of 
60,000 at its peak, was unusually diverse for its time. Large populations 
of ethnic groups -- including Africans, Jamaicans, Chinese, Irish and 
Germans -- worked area gold and silver mines.

The human DNA was found on the tip of the needle-end of the glass syringe 
and on the needle in the syringe, as well as two other loose needles found 
under the floorboards, she said. The residue survived partly because it was 
protected from sunlight in a very dry place.

In addition to the needles and syringe, researchers discovered a urethral 
irrigator used to treat venereal-disease symptoms.

One possibility is that during the late 1860s or early 1870s, at least four 
adults were involved in a social gathering in which morphine was injected 
for euphoric effects, Schablitsky said.

She said a more realistic theory is that a doctor who specialized in 
treating venereal diseases was operating out of the house.

"People of all different races might have been going to this one doctor," 
Schablitsky said. "It could give us a better idea of how people in the past 
operated with each other at a racial level."
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