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Dr. Thomas McGovern's Greenland Research Discussed in Cover Article of Science Magazine

The archaeological research of a team headed by Professor Thomas McGovern, of the Anthropology Department, was discussed in the November 10 cover article of Science magazine http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/why-did-greenland-s-vikings-disappear.  Dr. McGovern's research centers on the Norse settlements on Greenland, which lasted from approximately 1000 C.E. to "the disappearance of these Norse settlements sometime in the 15th century." The narrative that the Norse disappeared from Greenland due to their failure to adapt to changing environmental conditions is changing, according to McGovern: "You start to see old data, like the seal bones in the middens, in a new light. It's exciting to revise your old thinking...We used to think of Norse as farmers that hunted. Now, we consider them hunters who farmed."

As our own climate warms, though, the excavation of artifacts that have been preserved for centuries in permafrost is becoming increasingly difficult; as Science correspondent Eli Kintisch notes, "today's archaeologists fear a different oblivion—that Greenland's prehistory will be lost unless it is quickly unearthed. As pioneers who weathered climate change, the Greenland Norse may hold lessons for society today. But the very changes that make those lessons urgent could keep them from ever being fully deciphered."

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