6000-year-old artifacts

tunic

Pretty cool, although really everything shouldn’t be melting:

An Iron Age tunic is among the discoveries found under melting snow on Norwegian mountains.

Other findings include Neolithic arrows and bow fragments, thought to be about 6000 years old.

Snow on the Norwegian mountains, and elsewhere, is rapidly melting due to climate change, which is now unveiling a world of well preserved new discoveries.

The findings are published in two papers in the journal Antiquity.

“The new find is of great significance for dress and textile production and how these reflect the interplay between northern Europe and the Roman world,” said Marianne Vedeler from the University of Oslo, Norway, who analysed the garment.

The tunic, found on the Norwegian Lendbreen glacier, was partly bleached from sun and wind exposure. It showed hard wear and tear and had been repaired with two patches.

It was made between 230 and 390 AD and is one of only a handful of tunics that exists from this period. Two different fabrics were present and the fibre tips revealed that both were made of lamb’s wool or wool from adult sheep.

“The Lendbreen tunic is a first glimpse of the kind of warm clothing used by hunters frequenting the ice patches of Scandinavia in pursuit of reindeer. It had no buttons or fastenings, but was simply drawn over the head like a sweater,” said Dr Vedeler.