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."