New research shows that thawing ice in northern British Columbia, Canada, has revealed what archaeologists claim is an undiscovered cache of ancient, perishable artifacts.
These artifacts, some of which are as old as 7,000 years, have unique significance and are made primarily of materials that would not normally hold up in warmer climates.
These findings range from basic containers made of tree bark and animal skin to bone and obsidian ice picks and hand axes, and emerged in 2019 near Canada’s Mount Edziza Provincial Park, as described in a recent study.
For many thousands of years, and to this day, the area surrounding Mount Edziza Provincial Park has served as a hunting ground for the Tahltan, one of Canada’s indigenous First Nations.
Previous discoveries in the region have uncovered stone artifacts and obsidian quarries used to craft these tools. However, the recent thawing of ice has uncovered a range of ancient artefacts, including those made from perishable materials such as vegetation and animal by-products, which typically spoil quickly and cannot withstand long-term storage.
“Radiocarbon ages on 13 of the ephemeral artifacts show that they span the past 7,000 years,” the researchers report in a paper describing their findings.
During surveys conducted in the summer of 2019 amid chunks of melting ice, archaeologists investigating the area around Mount Edziza Provincial Park unearthed numerous artifacts, more than 55 of which were made of perishable materials, as reported by The Miami Herald.
Among the perishable artifacts found were wooden tools encased in animal skins, estimated to be up to 3,000 years old, as well as wooden sticks once carried by ancient hunters as they traveled through difficult terrain.
Additionally, discoveries include basketry, projectile shafts, and even ancient footwear made from animal skins.
The discoveries were revealed by Duncan McLaren and colleagues in a paper“Ice Patches and Obsidian Quarries: Integrating Research Through Collaborative Archeology in Tahltan Territory,” published in October in the Journal of Field Archaeology.
