Norwegian Ice Melt Reveals 'Frozen Archive' of Ancient Reindeer-Hunting Arrows

The team found 68 arrows in the Longphone Ice Patch in the Jട്ടുtgenheim Mountains, and found artefacts dating back thousands of years, from the Stone Age to the Middle Ages.

Discovery, published as a study this week The Holocene The journal also includes the remains of reindeer ants, iron scarecrows used for reindeer hunting, and 3,300-year-old shoes from the Bronze Age. The authors say the arrows mark the first discovery of ice in northern Europe.

The Jട്ടുtgenheim‌n Mountains are located in Norway 200 miles (more than 320 km) north of the capital Oslo.

The Longphone ice patch, discovered by arrows, has gone back more than 70 percent over the past two decades as global warming caused dramatic ice melting, the study says.

“As the ice now recedes due to climate change, evidence for ancient hunting in Longphone is briefly re-emerging from a frozen archive,” said Lars Pyle, a leading author of the study and an archaeologist at Inland County County Council. .

“Ice melting is sad, providing an unprecedented archeological opportunity for new knowledge.”

The oldest arrows from around 4000 BC are in poor condition. Surprisingly, arrows from the last Neolithic period (2400-1750 BC) are well preserved for the next 2,000 years.

Using ground penetrating radar (GPR) technology, researchers believe the worst condition of the oldest arrows could be caused by ice movement.

GPR data revealed that deep ice deformation inside the patch may have shattered old and brittle arrows, but helped bring them to the surface to detect them.

“Ice patches are not your regular archeological sites,” Pille said. “Glacial archeology has the potential to transform our understanding of human activity in the high mountains and beyond.”