Ice Coring Archaeoecological Adventures with Dr. Robert (Bob) Kelly

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Three Sides of a Career: Papers in Honor of Robert L. Kelly" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The release of cultural and biological materials from melting snow and ice is the foundation for the field of ice patch archeology, a sub-field of cryospheric archaeology—the archaeology of the frozen world. To better understand the nature and potential of the ice patch record in the mid-latitude Rocky Mountains, ice patches in the Greater Yellowstone Area and in Glacier National Park were cored to recover accumulations of organic materials (lags) that form debris-covered surfaces during melt periods. Radiocarbon dating of the recovered lags demonstrate the presence of thousands of years of preserved material in these locations. This paper shares the methods used to obtain the cores and examines the ages of the lags recovered from three different cores for contemporaneity. The paper also examines the ages of the lags (melt surfaces) relative to the ages of directly dated organic artifacts recovered at ice patches. Indigenous partners participated in the planning and execution of these projects and the species/plant communities identified in the lags were shared with interested Indigenous and scientific communities, e.g., botanists.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Three Sides of a Career: Papers in Honor of Robert L. Kelly   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39035.0