Day 4/7. Excavating the Vävarsbacka II neolithic stone-age dwelling site in Porvoo S. Finland

Today was the busiest day of the excavation so far. As we are now excavating the part of the cultural layer which is very rich in finds Janne and Katja were very busy handling the tachymeter. The participants of the field course on the other hand were busy with digging up the hundreds of stone-age finds while I was doing photographic documentation and drawing up maps of the excavation area.

Busy, busy, busy.

The star find of the day was a beautiful slate chisel, still as sharp as the day it was last used some 4 500 years ago. Makes you wonder why it was discarded on the site.

4500-5000 year old slate chisel found in the S part of the excavation area today.

Most of the finds today consisted of many well preserved and large potsherds from several different neolithic clay vessels. Some of the vessels have been so large that they must have been placed permanently (pssibly partly dug down) in a specific part of the delling site during it´s last stages of occupation.

Neolithic potsherds from todays excavtion of the Vävarsbacka II site.

More nice finds tommorrow when we will reach the deeper excavation layers, possibly containing older finds.

A neolithic potsherd sees the daylight again after over 4500 years in the ground.