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 20^th 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.

遗传分析提供了一个强大的工具，可用来识别历史物体的生物学成分。Te Tiriti o Waitangi | 《威坦哲条约》是新西兰的创始文件，旨在成为土著毛利人和英国王室之间的伙伴关系。在这里，我们将重点放在已归档的空白羊皮纸上，该空白羊皮纸被提议作为《条约》的怀唐伊工作表下层羊皮纸的缺失部分。但是，其物理尺寸和特征与该假设不一致。我们在条约的羊皮纸上加上空白的羊皮纸上进行遗传分析。我们发现这三张羊皮纸都是用母羊制成的，空白的羊皮纸很可能是从怀唐伊片的下膜切下的一部分，因为它们共享相同的整个线粒体基因组，包括一个不寻常的异质位点。我们建议，两张羊皮纸在大小和特征上的差异可能是由于条约在20年代初暴露于水引起的。^个世纪和日后的维修工作，展览或在20世纪70年代和80年代后期养护处理过程中曝光。空白的羊皮纸将有助于进行比较测试，以研究早期治疗的效果并监测长期展示该条约的效果。