1000 Year Old Blubber Found
I found this - from the Anchorage Daily News - very interesting
Douglas Henry knew it was old when he found a slab of mangtak -- or whale blubber with skin -- in a food cache last summer. Yet, when the 27-year-old Gambell resident recently learned that, after carbon dating analysis, the blubber is estimated to be 1,000 years old, he was a bit surprised.
If you think of archaeology - you think ruins, pots, skeletons, mummies - all the romantic "Indiana Jones" stuff - you never think of the real lives of real people who lived in these times.
The finding of a 1000 piece of blubber in an old food cache isn't romantic - but it will help to build up a picture of history - this finding is significant in a number of ways.
It indicates that the way of life in these areas has a long history and tradition going back more than 1000 years.
... the carbon dating is scientific proof for what the people have told newcomers all the time. "We've told people from outside that we've been doing this for a long time. Now we have good proof for that claim.
"We're trying to save our subsistence way, our way of whaling. It's our way of life. This dating proves that we have done this for a very long time,"
How much "frozen archaeology" is to be found in the world?
In Alaska, Antarctica, and other places where there is permanant ice or perma-frost cover, archaeology must be difficult or impossible
Maybe modern technologies for remote-sensing using satellites can help to unlock the secrets of the frozen wastes as effectively as they are unlocking the secrets of the Mayan civilisation in the jungle.
Tags: remote-sensing, nasa, geology, archaeology, mayans