The climatic significance of artefacts related to prehistoric reindeer hunting exposed at melting ice patches in southern Norway

Abstract

The main aim of this study is to describe consequences of climate change in the mountain region of southern Norway with respect to recently exposed finds of archaeological remains associated with reindeer hunting and trapping at and around ice patches in central southern Norway. In the early years of the twenty-first century, warm summers caused negative glacier mass balance and significant glacier retreat and melting of ice patches in central southern Norway. As a result, prehistoric remains lost and/or left by past reindeer hunters appeared at ice patches in mountain areas of southern Norway. In the warm summer and autumn of 2006 the number of artefact recoveries at ice patches increased significantly because of melting of snow and ice patches and more than 100 objects were recovered in the Oppland county alone. In 2009, detailed multidisciplinary investigations were carried out at the Juvfonne ice patch in Jotunheimen at an elevation of c. 1850 metres. A well-preserved Iron Age hunting station was discovered and in total c. 600 artefacts have been documented at the Juvfonne site alone. Most of the objects were recovered and brought to the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo for conservation, exhibition and storing. Thirteen so called ‘scaring sticks’ recovered from the recently exposed foreland of Juvfonne were radiocarbon dated, yielding ages that group in two separate time intervals, ad 246–534 and ad 804–898 (±1 sigma). By putting the temporal distribution of the radiocarbon-dated artefacts into the context of late-Holocene glacier-size variations in the Jotunheimen and Jostedalsbreen regions, we conclude that the most extensive reindeer hunting and trapping associated with snow/ice patches was related to periods with prevailing warm summers when the reindeer herds gathered on high-altitude, contracted glaciers and ice patches to avoid insect plagues. The ‘freshness’ of the fragile organic finds strongly indicates that at least some of the artefacts were rapidly covered by snow and ice and that they may have been more-or-less continuously covered by snow and ice since they were first buried.

Further Details on Holocene Treeline, Glacier/Ice Patch and Climate History in Swedish Lapland

“…This archive, also containing numerous human and cultural artefacts, has been widely recognized and exploited by archaeologists (e.g. Nesje et al 2011; Lee &Benedicht 2012;Reckin 2013), but in Scandinavia surprisingly little payed attention to by palaeoecologists.…”

New Aspects of High-Mountain Palaeobiogeography: A Synthesis of Data from Forefields of Receding Glaciers and Ice Patches in the Tärna and Kebnekaise Mountains, Swedish Lapland

“…In many parts of the world, recent glacier recession has opened an entirely new window on the palaeoecology, vegetation history, and archaeology of sites at high elevations (Dyurgerov and Meier, 2000;Farnell et al, 2004;Dove et al, 2005;Nesje, 2009;Menounos et al, 2009;Nesje et al, 2011;Andrews and MacKay, 2012;Callanan, 2012). In forefields of mountain glaciers and perennial snow and ice patches, in most cases quite close to the tree line, exposure of megafossil tree remnants of different species spanning major parts of the Holocene is quite common (e.g., Nicolussi and Patzelt, 2000;Hormes et al, 2001;Schlüchter and Jörin, 2004;Koch et al, 2007;Benedict et al, 2008;Joerin et al, 2008;Wiles et al, 2008;Scapozza et al, 2010;Koehler and Smith, 2011;Nicolussi and Schlüchter, 2012).…”

14C Measurements of Ice Samples from the Juvfonne Ice Tunnel, Jotunheimen, Southern Norway—Validation of a 14C Dating Technique for Glacier Ice

“…The expected age for that site ranges from 1378 to 3207 cal yr BP as previously estimated based on the surrounding, conventionally 14 C-dated samples Juv-1051 and Juv-1053 as reported by Nesje et al (2011). One sample (JUV 1_1/2) out of the JUV 1 series giving an age of 3890-4820 cal yr BP was considered an outlier.…”

“…Means of the respective sample series are given in bold. Italic data represent the reference ages used to constrain the expected age ranges (see text; data from Nesje et al 2011). Calibrated using OxCal v 4.1 (Bronk Ramsey 2009) and the IntCal09 data of Reimer et al (2009) relatively older value of 1180-2720 cal yr BP with a considerably larger 1 range.…”

“…Particularly in the deepest parts of a glacier, where thinning of annual layers does not allow for conventional annual layer counting (ALC) on seasonally varying parameters (Thompson et al 1990) and where the application of ice flow models is often hampered by the complex small-scale topography of bedrock (Lüthi and Funk 2001), other techniques are required to establish a precise age-depth relation. Radiocarbon dating has successfully been applied to date natural ice samples in cases where sufficient carbon containing material such as plant fragments, insects, or other organic remains were incorporated (Thompson et al 1998(Thompson et al , 2006Nesje et al 2011). We developed a 14 C method for dating ice-core samples utilizing the ubiquitous trace amounts of carbonaceous aerosol particles embedded in the ice matrix and applied it to natural ice samples from various glaciated regions all over the globe including some in-depth investigations of basal ice-core sections Kellerhals et al 2010;Wientjes et al 2012;Herren et al 2013).…”