Books: The Golden Spruce
2023-07-19
I enjoyed this book less because of the story and more because of the sense of place. Like taking a trip to the remote areas of Alaska and British Columbia — and in some ways better.
jdilla.xyz
15th century Venetian beads found in Alaska
2023-03-02
Not new but new to me; interesting never less. From Smithsonian Mag:
Archaeologists dug the beads up in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Now, a new study published in the journal American Antiquity asserts that the glass objects are among the oldest European-made items ever discovered in North America.
Per the paper, Michael Kunz of the University of Alaska Museum of the North and Robin Mills of the Bureau of Land Management studied ten glass beads found at three sites along Alaska’s Brooks Range. The researchers used mass spectrometry carbon-dating to analyze trace amounts of twine discovered alongside three of the beads and date the artifacts’ creation to between roughly 1397 and 1488.
The beads provide evidence for overland trade networks reaching Alaska from the East (Siberia).