12,300-Year-Old Bone Pendants May be Oldest Artwork Ever Discovered in Alaska

Carved bone pendants have been found at a prehistoric site in Alaska that may prove to be the very first known examples of artwork in the northern region of North America.

Two pairs of pendants were revealed at the Mead archaeological dig site in the wilderness of the Alaska interior between Fairbanks and Delta Junction. At a recent lecture at the UA Museum of the North, anthropologist Ben Potter from the University of Alaska Fairbanks said of the find, “It made my heart stop when I saw it.”