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A prehistoric man who became mummified in a mountain glacier was in dire straits towards the end of his life, having been cut off from supplies of essential tools.

Ötzi, known as the Iceman, was discovered in 1991 in a glacier in the Alps, near the border of Austria and Italy. He lived about 5300 years ago, during the Copper Age. Since his discovery a wealth of information has been unveiled about his life – notably that he died after being shot with an arrow, the head of which was found embedded in his shoulder.

Now of the Soprintendenza Archaeologia in Florence, Italy and her colleagues have taken a close look at the stone tools Ötzi was carrying. He was found with six tools, made of chert – a rock often used to make prehistoric tools.

Running low

Ötzi had taken good care of them. “The Iceman had performed a careful and repeated resharpening and repair of his working tools and weapons, with the antler retoucher he carried with him,” says Wierer.

But they were almost worn out. “Most tools, though still functioning, had arrived to their last phase of utilization,” says Wierer. They were “very small, with hardly any further possibility of resharpening”.

This implies that Ötzi was in a “critical situation… during his last days,” says Wierer. “He apparently did not have the possibility to get new chert for integrating his reduced toolkit and to make new arrowheads for the unfinished shafts.”

The chert came from as much as 70 kilometres away, the team found. “The chert of Ötzi‘s small toolkit had been ‘imported’ from at least 3 different provenance areas, including the neighbouring Trentino region,” says Wierer.

Evidently the tools were transported many kilometres, but Ötzi had somehow become cut off from this exchange network. Finally, the team believes Ötzi was right-handed. based on the direction of wear on the tools.