6,000 Years of Arrows Emerge From Melting Norwegian Ice Patch
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for aristarchus_:
6,000 years of arrows emerge from melting Norwegian ice patch:
Archaeologists in Norway have discovered dozens of arrows-some dating back 6,000 years-melting out of a 60-acre ice patch in the county's high mountains.
Expeditions to survey the Langfonne ice patch in 2014 and 2016, both particularly warm summers, also revealed copious reindeer bones and antlers, suggesting that hunters used the ice patch over the course of millennia. Their hunting technique stayed the same even as the weapons they used evolved from stone and river shell arrowheads to iron points.
Now the research team is revealing the finds in a paper published today in the journal Holocene. A record-setting total of 68 complete and partial arrows (and five arrowheads) were ultimately discovered by the team on and around the melting ice patch-more than archaeologists have recovered from any other frozen site in the world. Some of the projectiles date to the Neolithic period while the most "recent" finds are from the 14th century A.D.
Also at:
Ice melt reveals ancient reindeer-hunting arrows. - Thanks Runaway1956!
Journal Reference:
Lars Holger Pilo, James H Barrett, Trond Eiken, et al. Interpreting archaeological site-formation processes at a mountain ice patch: A case study from Langfonne, Norway: [open], The Holocene (DOI: 10.1177/0959683620972775)
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