On the Road Again

For an archaeology students, job opportunities are often scarce and sprinkled around the country, with a contract typically lasting only for the duration of a single excavation. It's also typical that the job ads appear only a few weeks before the said excavation, making it stressful to wait for potential work offers. That's why I've been glad and humbled to have a fixed schedule from early on, and while I have barely had a few days of holiday during summer, I happily moved straight from Hanko to the  beginning of the next journey of my summer – this time within the Finnish Heritage Agency.

As it's said on their website, the Finnish Heritage Agency preserves Finland's material cultural heritage: collects, studies and distributes knowledge of it. They have various departments from museum services to preserving cultural environment and handling research permits for archaeological excavations. My position for the next three months will be within the trial excavation team, which is sent to carry out small excavations to sites that will be affected by private building projects.

As the trial excavation team carries out around 40 excavations annually, the schedule is very tight and includes sites all around the country. For the next months, I'll barely set foot within my home in Helsinki, as we'll be traveling to sites in places such as Tornio, Kontiolahti, Virrat and Keitele, where we started our three-week long excavations on Monday. In Keitele, we're excavating a Mesolithic site, which was found a few years back and has already seen some research in a form of multiple test pits. However, this time the plan was to properly excavate the areas that would fall under future land use.

So far we've opened three separate trenches, which have not only been rich in quartz and bone remains, but have also revealed three possible fire places. However, as the areas are fairly big and we have a reasonably small crew, we'll have to continue a bit deeper before anything more can be said. Thus, as long as the work is ongoing, I will leave my thoughts and ponders for a later time.

Mesolithic fire place waiting to be uncovered from under the stump.

Location: Keitele, Suomi

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