Message #134718

[Bianca]

Stacy Dohm
Hero Member

Posts: 1147



     Re: Tools of ancient Alaskans emerge from ice
« Reply #2 on: July 27, 2007, 09:15:04 pm » Quote 

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The basket is one of many artifacts scientists are finding on ice patches-dying fields of snow and ice that are too small to flow like glaciers. These ice patches, located in the mountains of Alaska and Canada, are shrinking to reveal at their edges arrow shafts, barbed antler points, and other items that usually decompose before archaeologists can find them.

In a five-year project in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, researchers are following the lead of colleagues in the Yukon by traveling to high-country ice patches to search for old tools, clothing, and other organic materials exposed by retreating ice and snow. Dixon, an anthropology professor at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has made several trips to the Wrangells during the project.

"We can take a very small amount of organic material-like the amount you'd get from drilling a tooth-and do radio-carbon dating and isotope analysis," Dixon said. "We can find out the age of the material and environmental conditions at the time. We're getting new insights into the technology people used in Alaska thousands of years ago."

Members of the team found several arrow shafts, dated at 370 to 850 years old, made of spruce wood split from the trunk of the tree rather than the branches.

"The shafts are made from split staves of white spruce-long, straight slivers that are rounded and tapered," Dixon said.

The Wrangells research team is concentrating on six ice patches in the largest national park in the United States. Dixon described the ice patches as "oasis-like features that attract caribou, sheep, and other animals that seek relief from heat and insects."