Kwäday Dän Ts'ìnchi, or "Long Ago Person Found" is the name given to the human individual discovered melting out of a glacier in northwestern British Columbia in 1999.
The body is that of a young adult male, wearing a robe-style fur garment and a plant fiber hat. He was found some 80 kilometers inland from the coast, but recent investigations using a combination of biomolecular fingerprinting and stable isotope analysis suggest that marine foods were a substantial portion of his diet during his life up until the last few weeks, when he mostly relied on terrestrial foods.
Kwäday Dän Ts'ìnchi was recently radiocarbon dated to between 1670 and 1850 cal AD--post-Columbian but prior to European settlement of British Columbia.
Sources
An excellent source of information is on the Kwaday Dan Ts'inchi website, assembled by the British Columbia's government.
Corr, Lorna T., et al. 2008 Probing dietary change of the Kwäda;y Dän Ts'ìnchi; individual, an ancient glacier body from British Columbia: I. Complementary use of marine lipid biomarker and carbon isotope signatures as novel indicators of a marine diet. Journal of Archaeological Science 35(8):2102-2110.
Richards, Michael P., et al. 2007 Radiocarbon Dating and Dietary Stable Isotope Analysis of Kwaday Dän Ts’inchí. American Antiquity 72(4):719-734.
This glossary entry is part of the Dictionary of Archaeology.
