Enlarge / Conservation efforts for the shoe included careful reshaping and freeze-drying. (credit: Secrets of the Ice ) Sometime between 200 and 500 CE, someone crossing a high mountain pass in Norway discarded a shoe. More than 1, 500 years later, an unusually warm summer melted centuries of accumulated snow and ice , revealing the […]
Enlarge Chemical traces of 3,500-year-old beeswax on central Nigerian potsherds shed light on an often invisible aspect of ancient diets—and a bit about what fueled the culture that launched Africa’s Iron Age. These farmers were super into metal Terms like “Iron Age” only have meaning if you’re talking about a particular place, since periods of […]
Enlarge / Rosvland used modern down feathers like these for comparison when he identified the species that contributed to the ancient pillow stuffing. (credit: Berglund and Rosvald 2021) Archaeologists have found the remains of downy pillows in the graves of two high-ranking Iron Age warriors in Sweden, dating to the 600s and 700s CE. Both […]