Between inland and sea in the stone- and bronze age.

It´s been a busy two weeks preparing for the upcoming excavations in Kemiö (Galtarby VI) and Vantaa (Jokiniemi) but now it seems I´m set to go, all official permits in hand and with a very good crews for both projects.

Starting with the Kemiö Galtarby VI excavation next week. The site has all the characteristics of a very early bronze age dwelling site situated in the area between inland and sea. This is the first time I have seen a site like this. It has all the characteristics of an early bronze age  site originally situated close to the archipelago so I have big hopes here. The island of Kemiö is very famous for it´s multitude of bronze age graves and some very  spectacular finds from a few of them. Finding the first bronze age dwelling site in the area would be very nice indeed.

The HEUREKA Vantaa (Jokiniemi) excavation will be a huge one with some 130 persons participating (although evenly distributed over many days). The co-operation with the people from both Heureka the Finnish Science Centre, the univerity of Helsinki  and the town of Vantaa has been excellent. For now my only concerns are about the removal of the topsoil of the excavation area which is situated in a park. I sincerely hope that the city of Vantaa will help us out here too.

The continuation of the archaeological excavations of Jokiniemi site after a break of approx. 20 years will no doubt mark the culmination of my digs in 2014. I´m soooo... looking forward to this one  <3.

I will post more on these projects (especially Galtarby) very shortly!

The Galtarby excavation is just a few weeks away :)

Soon it´s back to the stone age again, or maybe the bronze age who knows. The Galtarby VI site is full of mysteries. I paid my first visit to the site yesterday and got that GOOD feeling. The site seems totally untouched and is situated in a beautiful pine forest. The landowner "Bennu" R. was very friendly and helpful too. The excavation will start on the third of july and will be concentrating on issues of dating the dwelling site. Larger scale community archaeology excavations are planned for 2015 in co-operation with the local museum (Sagalund).

The site of Galtarby VI marked with a blue arrow on the map.

The road to the site was very scenic too and the winding road passed  through a wonderful agricultural landscape.

Picture by courtesy of "Asku"

The late stone-age shoreline at an elevation of about 20m. asl. was clearly visible and the islands showed up quite well in the "sea of  agricultural land".

"Islands in the fields" of Galtarby. Picture by courtesy of "Asku"

Back to Hanko 1941-1944, back in business

Tomorrow it´s back to Hanko and WW2 conflict archaeology with the great reporter Axa Sorjanen and war historian  Oula Silvennoinen to do some filming for Finnish National television (YLE). We are trying to get a WW2 war veteran and a few more historians on board but personally I think his team will do the trick tomorrow.

First a visit to the museum of Hanko to film and look at some really rare German original documents from the second world war.

Photo work copyright by Stig Leivo (and Google maps).

And then we hit the German camp area to do some filming and maybe even some surveying in the "Soldatenkino" area (if we can find it). It´s going to be a great day!

WW2 enamel mug  and what remains of a hand grenade (Hanko front).