A部分

Well above the treeline in Norway’s highest mountains, ancient fields of ice are shrinking as Earth’s climate warms. As the ice has vanished, it has been giving up the treasures it has preserved in cold storage for the last 6,000 years – items such as ancient arrows and skis from Viking Age traders. And those artefacts have provided archaeologists with some surprising insights into how ancient Norwegians made their livings.

B部分

Organic materials like textiles and hides are relatively rare finds at archaeological sites. This is because unless they’re protected from the microorganisms that cause decay, they tend not to last long. Extreme cold is one reliable way to keep artefacts relatively fresh for a few thousand years, but once thawed out, these materials experience degradation relatively swiftly.

With climate change shrinking ice cover around the world, glacial archaeologists need to race the clock to find newly revealed artefacts, preserve them, and study them. If something fragile dries and is windblown it might very soon be lost to science, or an arrow might be exposed and then covered again by the next snow and remain well-preserved. The unpredictability means that glacial archaeologists have to be systematic in their approach to fieldwork.

C部分

Over a nine-year period, a team of archaeologists, which included Lars Pil? of Oppland County Council, Norway, and James Barrett of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, surveyed patches of ice in Oppland, an area of south-central Norway that is home to some of the country’s highest mountains. Reindeer once congregated on these icy patches in the later summer months to escape biting insects, and from the late Stone Age, hunters followed. In addition, trade routes threaded through the mountain passes of Oppland, linking settlements in Norway to the rest of Europe.

The slow but steady movement of glaciers tends to destroy anything at their bases, so the team focused on stationary patches of ice, mostly above 1,400 metres. That ice is found amid fields of frost-weathered boulders, fallen rocks, and exposed bedrock that for nine months of the year is buried beneath snow.

‘Fieldwork is hard work – hiking with all our equipment, often camping on permafrost – but very rewarding. You’re rescuing the archaeology, bringing the melting ice to wider attention, discovering a unique environmental history and really connecting with the natural environment,’ says Barrett.

D部分

At the edges of the contracting ice patches, archaeologists found more than 2.000 artefacts, which formed a material record that ran from 4.000 BCE to the beginnings of the Renaissance in the 14th century. Many of the artefacts are associated with hunting. Hunters would have easily misplaced arrows and they often discarded broken bows rather than take them all the way home. Other items could have been used by hunters traversing the high mountain passes of Oppland: all-purpose items like tools, skis, and horse tack.

E部分

Barrett’s team radiocarbon-dated 153 of the artefacts and compared those dates to the timing of major environmental changes in the region – such as periods of cooling or warming – and major social and economic shifts – such as the growth of farming settlements and the spread of international trade networks leading up to the Viking Age. They found that some periods had produced lots of artefacts, which indicates that people had been pretty active in the mountains during those times. But there were few or no signs of activity during other periods.

F部分

What was surprising, according to Barrett, was the timing of these periods. Oppland’s mountains present daunting terrain and in periods of extreme cold, glaciers could block the higher mountain passes and make travel in the upper reaches of the mountains extremely difficult. Archaeologists assumed people would stick to lower elevations during a time like the Late Antique Little Ice Age, a short period of deeper-than-usual cold from about 536-600 CE. But it turned out that hunters kept regularly venturing into the mountains even when the climate turned cold, based on the amount of stuff they had apparently dropped there.

‘Remarkably, though, the finds from the ice may have continued through this period, perhaps suggesting that the importance of mountain hunting increased to supplement failing agricultural harvests in times of low temperatures,’ says Barrett. A colder turn in the Scandinavian climate would likely have meant widespread crop failures, so more people would have depended on hunting to make up for those losses.

G部分

Many of the artefacts Barrett’s team recovered date from the beginning of the Viking Age, the 700s through to the 900s CE. Trade networks connecting Scandinavia with Europe and the Middle East were expanding around this time. Although we usually think of ships when we think of Scandinavian expansion, these recent discoveries show that plenty of goods travelled on overland routes, like the mountain passes of Oppland. And growing Norwegian towns, along with export markets, would have created a booming demand for hides to fight off the cold, as well as antlers to make useful things like combs. Business must have been good for hunters.

H部分

Norway’s mountains are probably still hiding a lot of history – and prehistory – in remote ice patches. When Barrett’s team looked at the dates for their sample of 153 artefacts they noticed a gap with almost no artefacts from about 3,800 to 2,200 BCE. In fact, archaeological finds from that period are rare all over Norway. The researchers say that could be because many of those artefacts have already disintegrated or are still frozen in the ice. That means archaeologists could be extracting some of those artefacts from retreating ice in years to come.

在挪威最高山脉的树线以上，古老的冰原正在缩小，因为地球的气候变暖。随着冰消失，它释放出保存在寒冷环境中的珍宝，这些珍宝保存了6000年，例如来自维京时代贸易商的古代箭和滑雪板。这些文物为考古学家提供了一些关于古代挪威人谋生方式的令人惊讶的见解。

有机材料，如纺织品和皮革，在考古遗址上相对较少。这是因为除非它们受到导致腐烂的微生物的保护，否则它们不会持续太久。极寒是保持文物相对新鲜数千年的一种可靠方法，但一旦解冻，这些材料很快就会发生降解。

随着全球气候变化导致冰覆盖减少，冰川考古学家需要赶在时间之前发现新出土的文物，保护它们并研究它们。如果某些脆弱的物品变干并被风吹走，它们可能很快就会从科学中消失，或者箭矢可能会暴露然后再次被下一场雪覆盖并保存完好。这种不确定性意味着冰川考古学家在野外工作中必须有系统性的方法。

在为期九年的时间里，一个考古团队，包括挪威奥普兰县议会的Lars Pil和麦克唐纳考古研究所的James Barrett在南部挪威的奥普兰地区，这个地区是挪威最高山脉的所在地，对冰块进行了调查。麋鹿曾经在夏末聚集在这些冰块上，以避开叮咬的昆虫，从晚石器时代开始，猎人们也会跟随而来。此外，贸易路线穿过奥普兰的山口，将挪威的定居点与欧洲其他地区连接起来。

冰川的缓慢而稳定的运动往往会破坏位于它们底部的任何物品，因此该团队专注于静止的冰块，主要位于1400米以上的地方。这些冰块位于霜冻风化的巨石、倒塌的岩石和暴露的基岩之间，这些基岩在一年中的九个月里被雪覆盖。

巴雷特说：“野外工作很辛苦，我们要带着所有的设备进行徒步旅行，经常在永久冻土上露营，但非常有回报。你正在拯救考古学，让正在融化的冰更广为人知，发现独特的环境历史，并真正与自然环境联系在一起。”

在冰块收缩的边缘，考古学家发现了2000多件文物，这些文物的时间跨度从公元前4000年到14世纪文艺复兴时期。许多文物与狩猎有关。猎人可能会轻易丢失箭矢，他们经常丢弃损坏的弓而不是将它们带回家。其他物品可能是被穿越奥普兰高山口的猎人使用的：像工具、滑雪板和马具这样的多功能物品。

巴雷特的团队对153件文物进行了放射性碳定年，并将这些日期与该地区的主要环境变化（如冷却或变暖时期）以及主要的社会经济变化（如农业定居点的增长和导致维京时代的国际贸易网络的扩张）进行了比较。他们发现一些时期产生了大量文物，这表明人们在这些时期在山区非常活跃。但在其他时期，很少或没有活动的迹象。

根据巴雷特的说法，令人惊讶的是这些时期的时间安排。奥普兰的山区地形险峻，在极寒时期，冰川可能会阻塞较高的山口，使得在山的上部地区旅行极其困难。考古学家认为在类似晚古代小冰河期这样的寒冷时期，人们会呆在低海拔地区。然而，根据他们显然在那里丢弃的东西数量，猎人们即使在气候寒冷时也经常冒险进入山区。

巴雷特说：“令人惊讶的是，冰中发现的文物可能在这个时期继续存在，这可能表明在低温时期，山区狩猎的重要性增加，以弥补农业收成的损失。”斯堪的纳维亚地区气候变冷很可能导致广泛的农作物歉收，所以更多的人会依赖狩猎来弥补这些损失。

巴雷特的团队找到的许多文物的时间可以追溯到维京时代的开始，即公元8世纪到9世纪。连接斯堪的纳维亚与欧洲和中东的贸易网络在这个时期扩大。虽然我们通常在想到斯堪的纳维亚扩张时会想到船只，但最近的发现表明大量商品通过陆路，如奥普兰的山口传输。随着挪威城镇的发展以及出口市场的增长，对抗寒冷的需求以及用来制作梳子等有用物品的鹿角会大量增加。猎人的生意一定很好。

挪威的山区可能仍然隐藏着许多历史和史前历史，这些都在偏远的冰块中。当巴雷特的团队观察了他们样本中的153件文物的日期时，他们注意到从公元前3800年到公元前2200年几乎没有文物的间隙。实际上，该时期的考古发现在整个挪威都很罕见。研究人员表示，这可能是因为许多这些文物已经分解或仍然冻结在冰中。这意味着考古学家在未来几年可能会从退缩的冰中提取一些这些文物。