Climate change reveals unique artefacts in melting ice patches

DIG DEEPER at Norwegian SciTech News:
https://norwegianscitechnews.com/2022/05/climate-change-reveals-unique-artefacts-in-melting-ice-patches/

Norwegian mountains are full of time capsules. Thousands of years of human and ecological history are preserved in remnant patches of ice. Now this treasure trove of information threatens to melt away, unless we take action.

One day more than 3000 years ago, someone lost a shoe at the place we today call Langfonne in the Jotunheimen mountains. The shoe is 28 cm long, which roughly corresponds to a modern size 36 or 37. The owner probably considered the shoe to be lost for good, but on 17 September 2007 it was found again – virtually intact.

Sometime around 2000 BCE, a red-wing thrush died at Skirådalskollen in the Dovrefjell mountain range. Its small body quickly became buried under an ice patch. Upon emerging again 4 000 years later, its internal organs are still intact.

In recent years, hundreds of such discoveries have been made in ice patches, revealing traces of hunting, trapping, traffic, animals and plant life – small, frozen moments of the past.

Norway has soil that is consistently quite acidic, which means that organic material from the past is poorly preserved in the soil. Glaciers often move – and crush – what they hide below the surface. Ice patches, on the other hand, are relatively stable and therefore create exceptional conditions for preserving organic material.

“Objects and remains of animals and human activity have been found that we didn’t even know existed. They include everything from horse tack and clothing to arrows with tips made of shells, wooden shafts and feathers. Not a year goes by without surprising finds that shift the boundaries of our understanding,” says Birgitte Skar, an archaeologist and associate professor at the NTNU University Museum. She is one of the researchers behind a new report that summarizes the state of knowledge in Norway’s glacial archaeology.

The report describes a variety of fabulous findings but also paints a gloomy picture.

Only a few ice patches containing potential discoveries have been investigated systematically over time, and they have hardly been studied at all in northern Norway.

Short-term financing results in a lack of continuity in monitoring and securing artefacts from the ice patches. Some research has been done on finds, but it barely scratches the surface. All the while, all this knowledge is melting away at record speed.

DIG DEEPER at Norwegian SciTech News:
https://norwegianscitechnews.com/2022/05/climate-change-reveals-unique-artefacts-in-melting-ice-patches/

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