"Kriegsmarine" buttons and French "Eau de Cologne" bottles from the excavations of "Deutsches Lager Hanko".

We are digging into layer three at the moment. Many, many find stoday too and we cleaned a few of them for you to see. Todays finds included some intersting textile remains as well as several items made of leather (our fridge is filling up rapidly with these finds in desperate need of conservation).

Lunch break in sunny Hanko during the excavations.

Digging it.

Below are a few o todays vast array of finds. I´m trying to post pictures of finds that we haven´t encountered before but I will make an exception in the beginnning.

"Kriegsmarine" tunic buttons.

 A nice period porcelain plate but what do you think about the makers mark...

Where was this plate produced?

 German batteries for a flashlight...

... and a telephone

.Once again many of the finds were related to the medical care of he German soldiers. This small "Aspirine" box was issued to every German soldier fighting on the eastern or western front. The medicine was made by the infamous "IG Farben comany" for "Bayer".

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/economics/igfarben.html

Wonderful wound badge and more from the sixth day of excavating "Deutsches Lager Hanko"

Phew, what a day :). The day kicked off with the find of "Reichsarbeitsdienst (RAD)" enamel pin!

We are currently investigating the makers mark.

We started the day with a fresh new workforce of eight. And the finds kept on coming and coming...we actually had to stop the excavation early today because of the many very interesting items that turned up in layer two (we still have atleast four more to dig through! 

A german wound badge (missing it´s needle)

I really liked this very small item, it´s the tip of a small German model airplane (possibly a Heinkel)!?

Heinkel wing tip!

Among the bottles and food ration cans and military stuff it was nice to find an item that brought a female touch to it all. A gilded brass dress clip! The clip was probably a love trinket from a girlfriend back home in Germany or in some occupied country.

Notice the horseshoe (good luck) design on the dress clip. 

 More of the good stuff here again tomorrow!





Best, 

Jan, Jasmin, Anni and Jordan :)

"Deutsches Lager Hanko Baracke" interiors by Jan Martti Kaila and Japo Knuutila

Photographers Jan Martti Kaila and Japo Knuutila have been working very hard to document the last surviving German barracks of "Deutsches Lager Hanko"since 2014.

During their work they have witnessed first hand how nature  takes over and turns the man made constructions into piles of sawdust, rotting timber and moss.

Below are a few of their latest pictures. They might actually also be the last ones as the roofs of the barracks are caving in almost on a daily basis.

Enjoy the pictures but do not try to enter the barracks it is extremely dangerous!!

The photographic documentation of the barracks is part of Jan Kailas art project "Poetic Archaeology". The project is administered by Jan Kaila and financed by "Taideyliopisto" and "Vetenskapsrådet (Swe)"

The road to hell in three German coins (and three decades)

Hi this is Jan again :). Today was our fourth day of excavating  the German transition camp and the finds just rolled in once again.  Almost immediately we found these three German coins in the same tight context. They kind of show the road from peace time to war time in design and years (1904, 1924 and 1939).

Three German coins.

Most of the area of Cape Tulliniemi is a nature reserve where all unauthorized digging is prohibited by law,.

Today the weather wasn´t what the forecast promised but we managed to stay dry for most of the day :). The damp weather was ideal for digging the more fragile items like those of paper or cloth.

The sea was calm on the northern side of Cape Tulliniemi near the German officers camp.

The Finnish senior reporter Markku Veijalainen filmed our work for his upcoming documentary about Cape Tulliniemi. What a great guy!

Markku films, we  dig.

Todays finds included more beautifully preserved paper items (documents etc.), leather straps and boot leather, fragments of uniform cloth and of course the heap of food ration tins keeps mounting :)

 Kettle and Wehrmacht standard ration food cans in excavation layer one.

Fragment of  Gernan uniform cloth. The green color is still as vibrant as it was in 1943.

German medical tubes, the one below was made in Hannover and once contained "Boorsalbe".

With the first week of excavations almost over I will take the opportunity to thank my great staff, archaeology students Jasmin Jyrä, Anni Tolppanen and Jordan Paddison. I would also like to thank Hangö sommaruniversitet, Taideyliopisto, Leica Finland and the people at the Freeport of Hanko, Finland and Yrsa Krüne for the lovely accomodation. Last but not least I would like to give a big thanks to all of you who participated in the excavation this week!!

Happy digging in Hanko :)

Interesting day number three!

Hello everyone, I'm Jasmin from the University of Aberdeen, but originally from Finland. What a lovely day number three has been in Hanko! We changed our excavation to area II which was full of metal, glass and porcelain objects. The place was full of mosquitoes, but we survived thanks to the smell of Summer (Finnish mosquito repellant). Me and Anni opened a test pit close to the actual excavation area and it is looking very promising. I can't wait for tomorrow!

Still readable after 70+ years in the ground.

 Soviet WW2 item, a soldiers mug.

Mauser cartridge with a new makers mark P 207 for "Metallwerke Odertal".

Small German medicine bottle.

The Aberdeen Archaeology Squad. 

Second day at Deutsches Lager, Hanko

What an amazingly sunny second day of digging it was here in Hanko! Hello everyone- it's Anni, an archaeology student from the University of Aberdeen, originally from Finland.

Today we finished the trial excavation of the "Entlausungdsorf" area and had a quick but efficient backfilling session- a big thank you for all the Hangö Sommaruni students for the hard work. Similarly to yesterday we had quite a few finds, some of our favourites you can see at the end of this post. We finished this warm and sunny day with cleaning some of the finds and getting our daily dose of vitamin D.

 Cleaning the finds and enjoying the warmth.  

 The fork part of a German spoon fork. 

 A whistle.

 

 A glass pot with an iron rim.

 Whetstone. 

 A cap from a tube of Blendax toothpaste. 

A medical device - possibly a pipette. 

The First Day At Deutsches Lager, Hanko.

Hi there, I´m Jordan - a 21 year old Archaeology student from the UK, who´s studying Archaeology with Anglo-Saxon and Celtic Studies at the University of Aberdeen. I´m assisting Jan on his 2016 stage of the Deutches Lager excavation, and with a small amount of sleep (due to my inexperience of the continuous light of Finnish nightime) I experienced my first day on site!

A large collection of artefacts were excavated today including those constructed of glass, Porcelain, Iron and Aluminium - as well as a selection of other materials. I´ll now present to you some of mine - and the rest of the team´s - favourite pieces!

 Fragments of massive glass ashtray.

 Finnish coin (1932) fountain (ink) pen nib and a bakelite gas protection related item (1938).

A mystery Bakelite item..

An ornate snuff box.

Part of a "Rucksack" strap (possibly Gebirgsjäger related)