Rare method sheds new light on Stone Age burials in Laukaa

Students from the University of Helsinki are studying Stone Age graves in Hartikka, a cemetery and settlement site in Laukaa, using a method rarely applied in Finland, Yle reports. The research could reveal new information even though materials such as bones have decayed.

The cemetery and nearby settlement date from the Typical Comb Ware period, between 3,900 and 3,500 BCE. The students carried out teaching excavations at Hartikka for two weeks in August.

Researchers collected numerous soil samples and will search them in the laboratory for organic traces smaller than a millimetre, including fragments of hair. The traces could help them create a three-dimensional model of the grave.

“What kind of clothes they had, how the burial place was lined or covered,” said Tuija Kirkinen, who led the excavations.

The method was developed at the University of Helsinki and has revealed traces of furs and bird feathers at the Skateholm cemetery in Sweden. In Finland, it has so far been tested only in research on a child’s grave at Majoonsuo in Outokumpu.

Hartikka’s graves are red ochre graves, in which the clothing or wrappings of the deceased, or the burial pit itself, was coloured with red ochre. Archaeology master’s student Minttu Sinkko said such graves have not been well preserved in Finland because of acidic soil. Bones, for example, have decayed.

She said the method could provide new information about burial practices and give the research international potential.

Hartikka is one of Finland’s nationally significant ancient monuments. The site has been well preserved because no buildings have been constructed over it, and the finds are close to the ground surface. The surrounding forest also contains dwelling depressions, or pit-like remains of Stone Age dwellings.

“This is exactly the kind of site where we can get a hold on the past,” Kirkinen said.

Kirkinen said understanding the past is important because it puts people in context. She noted that modern society is based on consumption, has materialistic values and uses animals industrially.

“It is good to return to the fact that we have had different ways of acting. For example, people’s relationship with animals has been very respectful,” she said.

Marja Ahola, a grant-funded researcher at the University of Helsinki, said people in the Typical Comb Ware period probably had an animist worldview, according to which all beings have a soul. They may not have drawn such a clear distinction between themselves and other living creatures, seeing humans as one part of the surrounding world.

People may, for example, have made objects from the bones of deceased companions, a practice that can sound macabre today.

Ahola said modern people could learn from that worldview.

“A human being more strongly as part of the environment, rather than above it. Perhaps such a worldview could be useful.”