Rare artifacts melt out of ice
At first glance, most of the artifacts lying in a tray on Greg Hare's desk look like nothing more than a collection of old sticks. Grey and weathered, they look singularly unexceptional resting on the cushion of blue rigid insulation.
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This atlatl dart found at one of the ice patch sites has been dated at 4,600 years old.
(photo: Steven Krasemann)
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One dark stone point lies at the bottom end of the tray, and the casual observer would assume that this is the sort of object that would absorb the attention of an archaeologist such as Hare. One can easily imagine this point being created and used by an ancient hunter, and surely this artifact has stories to tell for those who know how to tease them out.
But looks are deceiving, and these humble-looking sticks can potentially pass on much more information than any single stone point. That's because they are organic, and very, very old, and that combination does not come together too often in North American archaeology.
The objects on this tray are part of a large number of artifacts that have been found high in the mountains of the southern Yukon, melting out of ice patches that are rapidly decreasing in size. Some of the finds have been absolutely spectacular, including arrows with the feathers still attached and bands of red ochre paint still decorating the shafts.
Greg Hare, an archeologist with the Yukon Heritage Branch is coordinating the research on this collection of artifacts along with Sheila Greer, an archaeologist working for the Champagne-Aishihik First Nation.
Hare says that many of these artifacts are unique in Canadian archeology. "In Canada and in North America, organic artifacts are very rare. These are unprecedented finds," he says.
An atlatl dart was the first artifact picked up at one of the sites. It was dated at about 4,300 years old, which made it one of the oldest artifacts of thi s kind ever found in North America. But that dart now seems almost modern compared to a second one that has since been found. It was dated at 6,800 years old.
The problem is that most soils tend to be acidic, and the organic parts of bows and arrows and other weapons deteriorate fairly quickly, leaving only the stone points behind. Unfortunately stone and rock cannot be radiocarbon dated, so ages have to be assigned in other ways.
These discoveries are shedding new light on how people hunted in the distant past. At first people used spears, hurling them through the air with as much strength as they could muster. Then they figured out how to use atlatls, or throwing boards, to provide more leverage, basically extending the length of the throwing arm.
Bows and arrows evolved much later, showing up in the high arctic about 3-4,000 years ago. Beautifully preserved specimens have been dug out of the frozen ground there.
"If you try to follow the trail of this technology it leads you across the arctic and then slowly it tends to filter down south," says Hare. "There is a big gap in the evidence for a thousand years or so, and then all of a sudden it seems like bows and arrows were everywhere by about 1,500 years ago."
Part of the problem with tracing the trail is that in subarctic regions and points further south, the evidence has mainly rotted away. Fragments of a bow found at one of the ice patch sites proves that this technology had made it at least this far south by 1300 years ago.
Hare says that the ice patch research could also tell them a great deal about the particular points used with different weapons. When archeologists only have stone points as evidence, they have to guess how it was used. Was it the tip of an arrow, or was it bound to a spear and hurled through the air with an atlatl, or throwing board? Scientists usually have to make a lot of assumptions on this score, and they have come up with amazingly complicated formulas to help them out.
"You have people expending a tremendous amount of effort trying to squeeze as much information as they can out of stone tools. If you do not have the arrow with the knocked end and you only have the point, it can get really, really complicated. It gets into the realm of high physics."
Some of the weapons retrieved from the ice patches should definitely help with these sorts of questions. But Hare says they are not at that stage of research yet. Their main concern now is finding as many of the artifacts as possible before the ice fields totally melt away, which could happen in as little as five to 10 years.
All of the artifacts have been freeze-dried so that they do not deteriorate further. Now Hare is into what might be considered the more routine work of analyzing and inventorying all of the artifacts and looking for the exact characteristics that make each piece unique.
But when you are dealing with artifacts that most archeologists could only dream of having sitting on their desks, nothing is just routine. "It is an incredible opportunity that we have been given here," says Hare.
- Greg Hare can be contacted at greg.hare@gov.yk.ca.
- For more information on ice patch research, check yourYukon column 198 and column 199.
