LOM MUNICIPALITY, NORWAY—According to an NPR report, a new examination of an arrow shaft discovered in melting ice on the side of inland Norway’s Mount Lauvhøe suggests that it is approximately 4,000 years old, or 2,000 years older than previously thought. Other arrows recovered in the same area have been dated to the Iron Age and the medieval period, explained Lars Holger Pilø of Secrets of the Ice. Covered in silt and broken at both ends, the shaft may have once carried a pressure-flaked stone projectile. Radiocarbon dating of a sample of the wooden shaft will help to confirm the revised date. The arrow is likely to have been lost in the snow by hunters who had been stalking reindeer on the mountain, Pilø concluded. To read about other artifacts the Secrets of the Ice team has recovered from the ice of Norway’s mountains, go to “Melting Season.”
Arrow Recovered in Norway May Be 4,000 Years Old
News September 7, 2023
Recommended Articles
Digs & Discoveries November/December 2024
Monuments to Youth
Off the Grid November/December 2024
Selja Island, Norway
Digs & Discoveries September/October 2023
Royal Wharf
Digs & Discoveries May/June 2022
First Falconer
-
Features July/August 2023
An Elegant Enigma
The luxurious possessions of a seventeenth-century woman continue to intrigue researchers a decade after they were retrieved from a shipwreck
(Courtesy Museum Kaapskil; Courtesy Museum Kaapskil/© National Portrait Gallery, London) -
Features July/August 2023
Rise of the Persian Princes
In their grand capital Persepolis, Achaemenid rulers expressed their vision of a prosperous, multicultural empire
(Borna_Mir/ Adobe Stock) -
Letter from Patagonia July/August 2023
Surviving a Windswept Land
For 13,000 years, hunter-gatherers thrived in some of the world’s harshest environments
(Courtesy Raven Garvey) -
Artifacts July/August 2023
Norse Gold Bracteate
(Arnold Mikkelsen, National Museum of Denmark)