Ötzi the iceman is the holy grail of glacial archaeology, nothing less. The discovery of the 5300-year-old mummified body and the associated artefacts created a media frenzy and great public interest. Today, 250,000 people visit the Ötzi Museum in Bolzano each year to get a glimpse of Ötzi and the exhibited artefacts. A wealth of …
We have published a new scientific paper, this time in the Journal of Field Archaeology! In earlier publications, we had focused on the radiocarbon dates of the finds and on two of our most interesting sites (Lendbreen and Langfonne). However, the mountain ice is now melting in many places around the world. The time has …
For years, we kept the identity of one of our ice sites hidden, referring to it as our “secret arrow site.” The reason for the secrecy was that it contained a treasure trove of arrows. In fact, it is the ice site in the world with the most arrows, and by a large margin. Doing …
Mountain glaciers are retreating due to global warming. Surprisingly, this creates a boon for archaeology. Incredibly well preserved and rare artefacts emerge from melting glaciers and ice patches in North America, the Alps and Scandinavia. A new archaeological field has opened up – glacial archaeology. The archaeological finds from the ice show that humans utilised …
The use of skis for wintertime transport and hunting goes back into the mists of prehistory. The further we go back, the more uncertain and intriguing the story becomes. Mysteries abound. Where did skiing start? Siberia, the Altai Mountains, Scandinavia or somewhere else? The experts disagree. Were skis invented independently in more than one place …
The ice in the high mountains is melting due to climate change. Archaeological finds, mostly from reindeer hunting and mountain travel, are melting out of the glacial ice in Scandinavia, the Alps and North America. The artefacts are remarkably well preserved. The ice has acted like a time machine, preserving the finds through millenia like a giant prehistoric deep-freezer. This is …
When the storm broke and the temperature dropped, the six men and their packhorses were exposed to the full force of winter in the high mountains. They had no chance. What were they doing in the high mountains in the middle of the winter? Surely, they must have known that it was risky? Sources tell …
An interesting project on the reconstruction of the Lendbreen tunic was undertaken in 2015, directed by Marianne Vedeler at the Museum of Cultural History. The reconstruction of the tunic demonstrated that the processes involved in making such a tunic are very time-consuming. The tunic must have been an item of high value. A short video …
The archaeologists working with the frozen past have their own journal called “Journal of Glacial Archaeology”. It was published for the first time in 2014, and contained papers on e.g. Bronze Age Arrows from Oppdal, Norway and inca mummies from mountaintops in the Andes. The second volume is out now. Here we can find interesting papers from Norway, Switzerland …