Melting ice in Norway’s highest mountains is revealing archaeological remains dating back as far as 6,000 years, providing new insights into prehistoric activity at high elevations.
According to archaeologist Julian Robert Post-Melbye of the University of Oslo, the discoveries are challenging previous interpretations of how Norway’s mountainous landscapes were used during the Stone and Bronze Ages.
Until relatively recently, many artefacts recovered from melting Norwegian ice dated to the Viking Age or the preceding two millennia. However, continued ice loss is now exposing increasingly older archaeological deposits.
During the latest field season, archaeologists working with the Secrets of the Ice programme recovered 48 prehistoric arrows, with the oldest examples dating to between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago.
Researchers are also finding clothing, tools, everyday objects and even children’s toys along ancient mountain routes.
“It turns out that high in the mountains, not only hunters, but also farmers, craftsmen, travellers, and even children, were present,” said Post-Melbye. “Textbooks on the prehistory of the Norwegian mountains will have to be rewritten.”
Many of the finds are connected with prehistoric reindeer hunting. During warmer summer conditions, reindeer travelled from valleys onto patches of snow and ice to escape insects and regulate their body temperature.
Stone Age hunters appear to have understood this behaviour and positioned themselves at locations where the animals congregated.
Archaeologists frequently recover arrows and arrowheads from these hunting grounds, including projectiles that missed their targets and became embedded in snow before eventually being incorporated into the ice.
According to researchers, the presence of artefacts dating back several thousand years does not indicate that these areas were ice-free when prehistoric hunters visited them.
Instead, the finds demonstrate that ancient people were actively using the surface of ice patches that have remained largely undisturbed for millennia.
“This shows the enormous change we’re witnessing today,” said Post-Melbye. “We’re already reaching layers of ice that have remained undisturbed for thousands of years. Now this very ice is disappearing.”
Race to recover artefacts from melting ice
The ice has created exceptional preservation conditions for archaeological materials that would normally decay rapidly.
Organic remains including wood, leather, bone, textiles and feathers can survive for thousands of years when permanently frozen. Once exposed to air and changing temperatures, however, deterioration can begin almost immediately.
This presents archaeologists with an unusual challenge.
Modern archaeological practice generally aims to leave portions of sites undisturbed so they can be investigated by future generations using improved technologies. At melting ice sites, researchers may have only a short period in which to identify and recover newly exposed objects.
“Here, at an altitude of 2,000 metres, we have only days, maybe weeks, to secure the finds,” Post-Melbye said.
“The choice is: do it now or never do it. We can’t leave the site for years to come.”
Post-Melbye said that at some locations he has studied during the past 15 years, around half of the ice has already disappeared.
Researchers estimate that many of the ice patches containing archaeological material could vanish completely within the next two decades.
Could Norway reveal its own Ötzi?
The discoveries have also raised the possibility that Norwegian ice could eventually reveal preserved human remains comparable to Ötzi, the approximately 5,000-year-old natural mummy discovered in the Ötztal Alps in 1991.
Post-Melbye explained that such a discovery would require an exceptional sequence of events.
A person would have needed to die directly on the ice without their body subsequently being recovered by other people or disturbed by scavenging animals such as wolves or wolverines.
The remains would then need to have been rapidly covered by snow and ice and preserved under stable frozen conditions for thousands of years.
“Of course we hope to find something like that,” said Post-Melbye. “It’s possible.”
For archaeologists working in Norway’s mountains, however, the rapidly disappearing ice represents both an unprecedented opportunity and an irreversible loss.
As increasingly ancient layers melt, they are revealing evidence of prehistoric hunting, travel and everyday life that has remained sealed beneath the ice for thousands of years.
Sources : PAP
