Anthropology Professor James Dixon has spent the last five or six years searching for evidence of early man among the retreating glaciers of Alaska. He says this specialized research has only been possible because climate change is causing ice that was frozen thousands of years ago to melt. Dixon just returned from his summer field work in Alaska. And what he is finding is amazing.
Photo: James Dixon
“For example we have found wooden arrow shafts over a thousand years old that are painted. They still have the feathers attached to them, “he says. “They still have the antler points that are beautifully carved and barbed, along with sinew lashing. We can even see the knots they produced to tie these things on. So we have glimpses into the material culture that heretofore we’ve never seen.”
Dixon says the artifacts give indications of the way humans adapted to high altitude environments. Native people still occupy areas near the glaciers where he works, and members of the tribes do field work alongside the anthropologists. He says they have been fascinated by the insights they have gotten into their own past. The Native Americans also offer information about the animals that are found in the arctic environment.
Another thing that excites him is the continuity. He can see how people living on the sites now interact with the environment and is building a continuous record that goes back at least a thousand years and perhaps as far as 15-hundred years.
Dixon says at that point in history there seems to be a major change in the sort of tools that were used. Before that time he finds spear points and some arrows, then suddenly he finds a different kind of arrow. Now he is looking for an explanation for the change. He doesn’t yet know whether new people came into the area or the people who were already there abruptly learned new hunting techniques. But that’s one of those mysteries that keep anthropologists on the hunt for answers.
Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu
Posted by scarr at November 3, 2009 11:04 AM