Excavating a neolithic Pitted Ware Culture dwelling site in Geta. Day 3/10

Yesterday was a very rainy day here in Åland and we where forced to take a break in the excavations for the whole day. This morning the weather cleared and we worked for a full 8 hours and documented hundreds and hundreds of find spots (mainly for pottery, porfyrite flakes, stone tools and burnt bone) with our trustworthy Tachymeter. 

Janne Soisalo spent almost the entire day behind the Tachymeter.

All of todays finds are attributable to the Pitted Ware Culture and approximately  4 500 years old. The large and well preserved potsherds are plentiful and extremely beautiful. In comparison the stone tools are quite crude and almost "paleolithic" in appearance. Hundreds of kilograms of porfyrite flakes litter the entire excavation area .

Pitted Ware Culture rimsherd (left) and the bottom part of another vessel.

Crude and well worn porfyrite tools.

Today we also had many visitors including archaeologists Jan Storå, Niklas Stenbäck, Jenni Lucenius and Mikko Helminen from Åland and Andreas Forsgren from Sweden. It was very nice talking to you all.

Two happy archaeologists, Andreas Forsgren (left) and Jan Fast.

We are still only in the beginning of the dig with most of the finds still in the soil. Tomorrow we will finish excavating layer 1. and start excavating layer 2. This means that by next Friday we should have reached layer 3 where the excavation paused last year. Lots and lots of finds still lay hidden in the sandy soil.

The excavation area this  afternoon. Photo Tryggve Gestrin.