I've seen articles on this type of stuff passing through various forums
for several years.  I've always found archaeology interesting for no
particular reason.  Here is a recent article from U.S. News that I
actually still have in the dank recesses of my virtual repository.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/020916/misc/16meltdown.htm
Defrosting the past
Ancient human and animal remains are melting out of glaciers, a bounty
of a warming world
BY ALEX MARKELS
As he hiked near Colorado's Continental Divide in the summer of 2001, Ed
Knapp noticed a strange shape jutting from a melting ice field at 13,000
feet. "It looked like a bison skull," the building contractor and
amateur archaeologist recalls. "I thought, 'That's strange. Bison don't
live this high up.' "
Knapp brought the skull to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science,
where scientists last month announced that it was indeed from a
bison–one that died about 340 years ago. "This was an extraordinary
discovery," says Russ Graham, the museum's chief curator, adding that it
could alter notions of the mountain environment centuries ago. "There's
probably a lot more like it yet to be found."
And not just bison. Colorado isn't the only place where glaciers and
snowfields are melting. Decades of unusual warmth in regions from Peru
to Alaska–a trend some think is linked to emissions from cars and
industry–have shrunk or thawed many of the world's 70,000 glaciers. As
the ice recedes, a treasure-trove of human and animal artifacts is
emerging, extraordinarily well preserved after centuries in the deep
freeze. The fabrics, wood, bone, and DNA-rich tissue found on the mucky
fringes of the ice are revising scientists' understanding of our
predecessors' health, habits, and technology, and the prey they pursued.
"It's mind-boggling how many different fields are being advanced through
studying these remains," says Johan Reinhard, a high-altitude
archaeologist and explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic
Society. Rare, spectacular finds like the frozen mummies he discovered
in the Andes of Peru in the 1990s and the legendary 5,300-year-old "Ice
Man," found at the edge of a receding glacier in the Alps in 1991, have
offered time capsules of cultural and biological information. Now, as
the ice continues to retreat, it is yielding not just occasional
treasures but long records of humans and animals in the high mountains.
Vanishing act. The trick is finding such specimens before Mother
Nature–and looters–take them first. Once uncovered, frozen remains can
deteriorate within hours or be gnawed by animals. Moreover, they're
often so well preserved when they emerge that people who come upon them
don't even realize they're ancient.
That was the case when three men hunting sheep near a high glacier in
British Columbia, Canada, three years ago saw what they thought was a
dead animal. "It looked a little like sealskin buried in the ice,"
recalls Warren Ward, a teacher from nearby Nelson. "But when I looked
closer I could see leather fringe from a coat and finger bones."
Figuring they had found the remains of another hunter, or perhaps a fur
trapper, the men stowed a flint knife and other artifacts in a Zip-Loc
bag and delivered them to local officials. Archaeologists later exhumed
the fallen hunter's body, along with a woven hat, fur clothing, and what
seemed to be a medicine bag. Carbon dating revealed that the hunter
lived about 550 years ago. Dubbed Kwaday Dan Ts'inchi, or Long Ago
Person Found, by people of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations (who
may be his direct descendants), he is perhaps the best-preserved human
from the period ever found in North America.
Other findings from melting ice in the neighboring Yukon region could
explain what that long-ago person was doing in the mountains in the
first place. "Before this there was no archaeological record of people
living here," says Greg Hare, a Yukon government archaeologist. "Now we
see that this area was very much part of people's seasonal activities."
Like Ward's discovery, the search began by chance, when Kristin Benedek
caught a whiff of what smelled like a barnyard as she and her husband,
Gerry Kuzyk, hunted sheep at 6,000 feet in the mountains of the south
Yukon. They followed the scent to a melting patch of ice covered in
caribou dung. "It was really odd, because I knew there hadn't been
caribou in the area for at least 100 years," recalls Kuzyk, then a
wildlife biologist with the Yukon government.
Caribou cake. Returning a week later, he found "what looked like a
pencil with string wrapped around it." It turned out to be a
4,300-year-old atlatl, or spear thrower. Further investigation of the
ice patch–and scores of others around the region–revealed icy layer
cakes filled with caribou remains and human detritus chronicling 7,800
years of changing hunting practices.
Scientists now believe ancient caribou and other animals flocked to the
ice each summer to cool down and escape swarming mosquitoes and flies.
Hunters followed the game. They returned for centuries and discarded
some equipment in the ice. "We've got people hunting with throwing darts
up until 1,200 years ago," says Hare, who now oversees the research
project. "Then we see the first appearance of the bow and arrow about
1,300 years ago. And by 1,200 years ago, there's no more throwing
darts."
Now scientists are trying to make the search less a matter of luck. They
are developing sophisticated computer models that combine data on where
glaciers are melting fastest and where humans and animals are known to
have migrated to pinpoint the best places to search in Alaska's Wrangell
and St. Elias mountain ranges–the United States' most glaciated
terrain–and in the Andes. Johan Reinhard thinks the fast- thawing
European Alps could also deliver more findings, perhaps as exquisite as
the Ice Man. "Global warming is providing us high-altitude
archaeologists with some fantastic opportunities right now. We're
probably about the only ones happy about it."