The project takes its name from the urban site of Anyang in northern China, the last capital of the Shang dynasty. The cultural remains unearthed from Anyang represent an unparalleled source of authentic data on the ancient Shang, one of the four major early civilizations in the world. In addition to the vast array of artifacts excavated from Yinxu by the Anyang Archaeological Station, this famous site also contains numerous human burials from the late Shang period.
Burials range from presumably sacrificial offerings to the elaborate royal burials.
Dr. J.E. Molto has been directing the bioarchaeological research at Anyang since 1997 and has traveled to China three times to study the collection, and to select skeletal samples to bring to Thunder Bay for mtDNA analysis. To date, molecular genetic analysis of skeletal remains from the Heiheru site, Anyang has focused largely on issues of nucleic acid preservation and the authentication of extracted DNA, issues of fundamental concern to the ancient DNA community. In two separate studies, the preservation of ancient mtDNA within bone tissue and tooth dentine has been explored within the lab. However, the analysis of the Heiheru remains with respect to restriction site markers and control region sequence polymorphisms is beginning to yield interesting genetic characteristics of this ancient population. To date, the molecular genetic research on remains from Anyang has been carried out by two visiting graduate students from the University of Toronto and the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, trained at the Paleo DNA Lab in the techniques of ancient DNA extraction and analysis.