Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand.
Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.
PLoS One. 2019 Jan 16;14(1):e0210528. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0210528. eCollection 2019.
Genetic analyses provide a powerful tool with which to identify the biological components of historical objects. Te Tiriti o Waitangi | The Treaty of Waitangi is New Zealand's founding document, intended to be a partnership between the indigenous Māori and the British Crown. Here we focus on an archived piece of blank parchment that has been proposed to be the missing portion of the lower parchment of the Waitangi Sheet of the Treaty. However, its physical dimensions and characteristics are not consistent with this hypothesis. We perform genetic analyses on the parchment membranes of the Treaty, plus the blank piece of parchment. We find that all three parchments were made from ewes and that the blank parchment is highly likely to be a portion cut from the lower membrane of the Waitangi Sheet because they share identical whole mitochondrial genomes, including an unusual heteroplasmic site. We suggest that the differences in size and characteristics between the two pieces of parchment may have resulted from the Treaty's exposure to water in the early 20th century and the subsequent repair work, light exposure during exhibition or the later conservation treatments in the 1970s and 80s. The blank piece of parchment will be valuable for comparison tests to study the effects of earlier treatments and to monitor the effects of long-term display on the Treaty.
遗传分析提供了一种强大的工具，可以用来识别历史文物的生物成分。《怀唐伊条约》|怀唐伊条约是新西兰的建国文件，旨在建立毛利原住民与英国王室之间的伙伴关系。在这里，我们专注于一份已归档的空白羊皮纸，该羊皮纸据称是《怀唐伊条约》下羊皮纸的缺失部分。然而，其物理尺寸和特征与这一假设并不一致。我们对条约的羊皮纸膜以及空白羊皮纸进行了遗传分析。我们发现，这三张羊皮纸均由母羊制成，而空白羊皮纸极有可能是从怀唐伊条约的下膜上切下的一部分，因为它们共享相同的完整线粒体基因组，包括一个不寻常的异质质体位点。我们认为，两块羊皮纸在尺寸和特征上的差异可能是由于条约在 20 世纪早期接触到水，以及随后的修复工作、展览期间的光照或 20 世纪 70 年代和 80 年代的后期保护处理造成的。空白羊皮纸将非常有价值，可用于比较测试，以研究早期处理的影响，并监测长期展示对条约的影响。
