The GRAMPUS KIDZ 2K12 Experience: Kierikki, Finland

The GRAMPUS KIDZ 2K12 Experience: Kierikki, Finland

Elowyn Stevenson

Figure 1: 15 minutes of Finnish fame in the local newspaper, PohjolanSanomat.

From the moment I arrived with my fellow British archaeology students from the GRAMPUS scheme in Finland, I felt at home. Our hosts could not have been more helpful and generous. The accommodation was the best dig accommodation I’ve stayed in: we had access to a sauna and swimming pond, the rooms were huge and well-equipped, and we had a kitchen to cook in the evenings (and our hosts kept the fridge well stocked). Our digging days from 9 to 5 meant we had plenty of time in the evenings to go on bike rides, walks and swims, and because it was light round the clock for most of the six weeks, we could make the most of the outdoors. I would recommend bringing lots to do to fill in your time, such as crafts, letters, dissertation research, books, and absolutely a laptop (check whether the accommodation has wifi, or bring your own dongle) with films (remember that iPlayer doesn’t work outside of England). I would also bring an eyemask because the endless light takes a while to get used to, and earplugs.

On weekends, we usually spent time down in the Stone Age village because the lunch there is free and delicious, and we could practice our practical archaeology skills. Depending what days we had off, it was sometimes possible to hitch a ride with our hosts to Oulu. Oulu is a small city with a science museum, a pretty market square (with the most amazing strawberries and KimiRaikkonen t-shirts), a few cinemas (Finnkino worked out to be insanely cheap if you go around midday and bring your student card) and plenty of places to eat, drink and shop.Don’t miss a great lunchtime offer at Winger, opposite the Stockmann department store: the chicken wings and chips are divine, and weirdly, come with cucumber wedges. It is possible to have a night out in Oulu and stay at Sami (the excavation director)’s house. The nearest town from Kierikki is Yli-Ii, about a 15min cycle from the centre, where you can stock up on chocolate and beer/cider. If you plan on imbibing stronger beverages, pick them up at the duty free in Heathrow! (Finland is expensive, and you can only buy alcohol from an “Alko” such as the one next to Stockmann in Oulu.) It must be said that there is not a huge amount to do in the area on weekends, but we enjoyed relaxing around Kierikki and our hostel, and going into Oulu.

The excavation itself was fun and varied: we made three trenches over the weeks, each in a different housing depression. We found all the main finds from the Finnish Neolithic: slate, burnt stone and bone, quartz flakes, quartz scrapers, and pottery sherds. The GRAMPUS scheme laid on two days of Finnish lessons for us so we could explain to tourists what we were finding. The tourists also took part in the public excavations and we taught them the basics of excavation techniques. Ironically, it was the tourists who made the major finds this year: an 11-year old girl found parts of an amber disc pendant (the first amber found at Kierikki since 2007) and another tourist found a near-complete stone axe-head!

Figure 2: Over 5000 year old amber disc pendant found by 11 year old tourist.

Figure 3: One of the housing depressions we excavated.

We also learned primitive skills through practical archaeology. MatiasToivanen, a primitive skills specialist (and member of the Kuttelo Stone Age reenactment “tribe”) taught us how to roll cordage out of thin saplings, strip bark from trees with handmade bark strippers, scrape and tan hides (although we didn’t actually try the brain tanning technique because we didn’t have any brains), roast beaver and grubs over the fire (both tasted quite delicious), shoot bows, use the atlatl to throw spears, grind slate into ornaments and tools, knap quartz into scrapers, and canoe in dugout canoes (which were extremely heavy and unwieldy on land, but didn’t let in too much water). We also learned roof thatching in order to help thatch the roof of the new reconstructed row house building. This meant that we spent quite a lot of our time in the village doing practical archaeology, which broke up the digging very nicely. The Stone Age village has archery and spear throwing ranges, dug-out canoes, a slate-grinding area, bolas to throw, a “sweat hut” (small and brutal sauna dug into the ground), various reconstructed buildings to relax in, places to build fires, and the river is great for swimming in. We spent at least one day of our weekends there relaxing and practicing our skills.

Figure 4: Practical archaeology in action: slate grinding in the Stone Age village.

Figure 5: Thatching the interior part of the new row house roof in the reconstructed village.

Our primitive skills lessons cumulated in the Stone Age Market competition wherein the Finnish reenactor tribe Kuttelo faced the six of us Brits in a battle of wrestling, archery, spear throwing, wood chopping and canoeing. Our canoe sank as soon as it was pushed into the water, the axe head flew out of the handle while we were chopping through the tree, and all our archery shots went wide. We came in last place but had a great time trying! The rest of the market was a tame affair, showing tourists how to shoot bows, throw spears, paint with red ochre and make ceramics by pressing antler combs into wet clay to make the “typical comb ware” from around 4000 BC. It was fun being able to use our basic Finnish on the tourists.

Figure 6: Not pictured: sabre-tooth tiger.

As well as excavating, the GRAMPUS scheme had lined up activities for us. We went on an excursion to northern Finland to see Arctic animals at the Ranua zoo and visited the fantastic ARKTIKUM museum of Arctic life in Rovaniemi. We hiked through Hossa National Park to the Värikallio rock paintings which are situated dramatically on a sheer rock face at the edge of a lake, only accessible by a rickety boardwalk over the water. We also visited a nearby “Giants’ church”. These huge piles of stones were built between 2500 and 2000 BC on the ancient seashore around Yli-Ii (7km west of Kierikki). Their functions are unknown and explanations range from dwellings to burials places to ritual areas, but similar structures have been built by seal hunters today in northern Finland as cold storage areas for seal carcasses, which may have been the case during the Neolithic.

The 6 weeks I spent digging and carrying out practical archaeology at the Kierikki Stone Age Centre taught me many valuable skills. I was able to experience an excavation from start to finish: opening trenches by cutting down pine trees and stripping turf, to backfilling by shovelling sand and cutting more turf to re-cover the trench. I learned how practical archaeologists experiment with various methods to see which techniques may have been used by past peoples to manufacture objects and carry out everyday tasks. I feel that the excavation was very well run: we never felt rushed, which meant that we had time to dig carefully. It also allowed us to spend two whole days fine-sieving fruitlessly for amber fragments after the disc pendant was found. We archaeology students were exposed to a variety of dig techniques, some of which were different from other excavations I had been on, because digging tactics vary from place to place. It was also really interesting to spend time with members of the public (the Finns are very interested in their national heritage and ask lots of questions) and with our Finnish excavation team who fed us salt liquorice at every opportunity and invited us back to the sauna for sweaty fun-times and swimming in the lake. Thanks to my six week adventure with the Leonardo da Vinci scheme, I now feel as if I am well-equipped for life in the Finnish Neolithic.

Words by Eloywn Stevenson

Photos: Victoria Reid