Finnish Heritage Agency

Microscopic remains of plants, hairs, blood, bone, and sinew have been detected on Stone Age implements as evidence of the ways the tools were used. Together with use-wear analysis, microresidues enable us to obtain additional information of artefact biographies. However, the preservation of residues is not a straightforward issue. Although bones, plant matter, and wood have a tendency to decompose rapidly in acidic podzol soils, the acidity favours the preservation of keratinous tissues such as hairs and feathers. Because the analysis of microresidues has not been applied on Finnish quartz artefacts, this paper presents a preliminary testing of the method in a Late Stone Age settlement site in Kraakanmäki 3, western Finland. As a result, we found microscopic remains of hairs, feathers, and plants, which enable us to speak for the careful handling of quartz and stone tools at the excavations for further analyses.

To investigate changes in culinary practices associated with the arrival of farming, we analysed the organic residues of over 1,000 pottery vessels from hunter-gatherer-fisher and early agricultural sites across Northern Europe from the Lower Rhine Basin to the Northeastern Baltic. Here, pottery was widely used by hunter-gatherer-fishers prior to the introduction of domesticated animals and plants. Overall, there was surprising continuity in the way that hunter-gatherer-fishers and farmers used pottery. Both aquatic products and wild plants remained prevalent, a pattern repeated consistently across the study area. We argue that the rapid adaptation of farming communities to exploit coastal and lagoonal resources facilitated their northerly expansion, and in some cases, hunting, gathering, and fishing became the most dominant subsistence strategy. Nevertheless, dairy products frequently appear in pottery associated with the earliest farming groups often mixed with wild plants and fish. Interestingly, we also find compelling evidence of dairy products in hunter-gatherer-fisher Ertebølle pottery, which predates the arrival of domesticated animals. We propose that Ertebølle hunter-gatherer-fishers frequently acquired dairy products through exchange with adjacent farming communities prior to the transition. The continuity observed in pottery use across the transition to farming contrasts with the analysis of human remains which shows substantial demographic change through ancient DNA and, in some cases, a reduction in marine consumption through stable isotope analysis. We postulate that farmers acquired the knowledge and skills they needed to succeed from local hunter-gatherer-fishers but without substantial admixture.

The study of animal and plant fibers related to grave furnishing, garments, and grave goods in thousands-of-year-old burials provides new insights into these funerary practices. Their preservation presupposes favorable conditions, where bacterial and fungal activity is at a minimum, as in anaerobic, wet, salty, arid, or frozen environments. The extreme acidic-soil environments (i.e., podzols) of Finland pose a challenge when it comes to studying funerary deposits, as human remains are rarely found. However, its potential to preserve microparticles allows us to approach the funerary event from a totally different point of view. Here, we present the first multiproxy analyses of a Mesolithic deposit from Finland. A red-ochre burial of a child found in Majoonsuo is studied by analyzing 1) microscopic fibers, 2) fatty acids, and 3) physical-chemical (CIELab color, pH, grain size) properties of 60 soil samples and associated materials. The microscopic fibers evidenced the remains of waterfowl downy feathers, a falcon feather fragment, canid and small rodent hairs as well as bast fibers. These could have been used in furnishing the grave and as ornaments or clothes. Canid hairs could belong to a dog inhumation, or more likely to canid fur used as grave good/clothes. Samples with microparticles have more long-chain and unsaturated fatty acids, although animal species identification was not possible. Soil properties indicate that the burial was made in the local soil, adding homogeneous red ochre and removing the coarser material; no bioturbation was found. The highly acidic sandy soil, together with a slight increase in finer particles when ochre is abundant, probably resulted in micro-scale, anoxic conditions that prevented bacterial attack. This study reveals the first animal hairs and feathers from a Finnish Mesolithic funerary context, and provides clues about how their preservation was possible.

This paper deals with the attitude to the horse and the dog at a later Bronze Age site in central Sweden. Three different phenomena of social practise are linked together: the deposition of bones, slaughter marks on bones, and pictorial representation in rock-carvings and on artefacts. Two chronological phases at the settlement are compared in order to see if they display changes, regarding the three different phenomena, over time.

Forestry and the forest industry have long been the strongholds of the Finnish economy, especially after the Second World War. Finland is Europe’s richest country for forests and this renewable natural resource has been efficiently utilized in the wood and paper industry. Some 73 per cent of Finland’s surface area is covered by forests. In most European countries, forests cover significantly smaller percentages of the total land area, for example, Germany stands at 32 per cent, France at 29 per cent and the UK at 12 per cent. Roughly 45 per cent of Europe’s total surface area is covered by forests (FAO, 2010, pp. 226–27).

Prosjektet Effekter av klimaendringer pa kulturminner og kulturmiljo er et samarbeid mellom kulturminneforvaltningene i syv nordiske land: Island, Gronland, Faeroyene, Danmark, Sverige, Finland og N ...

The introduction and development of cultivation in eastern Finland was studied by pollen and charcoal analysis of a palaeomagnetically dated sediment profile from Lake Orijarvi, in the vicinity of permanent prehistoric fields. The earliest changes of possibly anthropogenic origin are visible in the pollen data from 1630 b.c. onwards and indications of human impact become more evident from 500 b.c. onwards. According to finds of cereal pollen and AMS-dating of charred cereal grains from the oldest field layer, the onset of cultivation can be dated to the Merovingian period around a.d. 600. To a significant extent the pollen data reflect only the cultivation of Secale during the first 600 years. The marked intensification of agricultural activities including cultivation in permanent fields only becomes evident in the pollen data from about a.d. 1050 to 1080 onwards and the most intensive land use phase dates to a.d. 1300–1965. Archaeological and palaeoecological material indicate that swidden cultivation and permanent field cultivation were in use simultaneously during the late Iron Age. The combination of these techniques together with animal husbandry and hunting formed a subsistence strategy in the climatic border-zone outside the centres of the agricultural core areas.

The development of Viking Age archaeology in Sweden is briefly discussed on the basis of a bibliographical and statistical study of the period from 1986 to 1990, The study reveals that Swedish archaeology has undergone two separate and now concluded "waves of evolution” during the twentieth century. The current tradition can be traced back to the 1970s. The developement can be described as that of a longue durée including some very swift changes (events), especially around 1987/88. This hermeneutic spiral seems to move from the artefacts to the contexts.