The chronology of reindeer hunting on Norway's highest ice patches

Abstract

The melting of perennial ice patches globally is uncovering a fragile record of alpine activity, especially hunting and the use of mountain passes. When rescued by systematic fieldwork (glacial archaeology), this evidence opens an unprecedented window on the chronology of high-elevation activity. Recent research in Jotunheimen and surrounding mountain areas of Norway has recovered over 2000 finds—many associated with reindeer hunting (e.g. arrows). We report the radiocarbon dates of 153 objects and use a kernel density estimation (KDE) method to determine the distribution of dated events from ca 4000 BCE to the present. Interpreted in light of shifting environmental, preservation and socio-economic factors, these new data show counterintuitive trends in the intensity of reindeer hunting and other high-elevation activity. Cold temperatures may sometimes have kept humans from Norway's highest elevations, as expected based on accessibility, exposure and reindeer distributions. In times of increasing demand for mountain resources, however, activity probably continued in the face of adverse or variable climatic conditions. The use of KDE modelling makes it possible to observe this patterning without the spurious effects of noise introduced by the discrete nature of the finds and the radiocarbon calibration process.

Crossing the ice: an Iron Age to medieval mountain pass at Lendbreen, Norway

“…Fourth, 11 samples of natural palaeozoological material have also been dated (Rosvold 2017). The results of the radiocarbon dating are mostly published in Pilø et al (2018), who discuss reindeer hunting on ice patches, and all available dates are provided here in the online supplementary material (OSM). The few (and chronologically diverse) dates for finds related to hunting and natural palaeozoological material are individually plotted in Figure 7 using probability distributions.…”

“…Glacial archaeology has developed to rescue artefacts exposed by this process (Dixon et al 2014), with archaeologists studying melting ice sites in North America, the Alps and Scandinavia (e.g. Hare et al 2012;Hafner 2015;Pilø et al 2018). This research is revealing past trends in high-elevation hunting, transhumance and travel associated with social, economic and ecological mechanisms.…”

“…reindeer antlers, horse bones and samples of horse dung). All the Oppland ice sites were used for hunting (Pilø et al 2018;Solli 2018), a characteristic that they share with North American sites (Reckin 2013). One of these Norwegian sites, Lendbreen, is distinctive because it also provides evidence for use as a mountain pass.…”

Prehistoric and Medieval Skis from Glaciers and Ice Patches in Norway

“…We now know that the context around ice patches is much more dynamic when it comes to snow melting cycles. The numerous other finds from the same time recovered in Oppland attest to this (Pilø et al 2018) Wooden objects can preserve for some time outside the ice at high altitude. The variation in ice patch sizes also depends on factors other than temperature (Ødegård et al 2017).…”

Frequency Analyses of Historical and Archaeological Datasets Reveal the Same Pattern of Declining Sociocultural Activity in 9th to 10th Century CE Ireland

“…The use of KDEs for summarizing radiocarbon data has been discussed at length recently by Bronk Ramsey (2017) and the method is rapidly gaining momentum (e.g. Pilø et al 2018).…”