Finishing up with Tulliniemi, week I

After finishing up with my "grand tour" around Satakunta, it was again time to return to the WWII German transition camp in Cape Tulliniemi, Hanko. While the site was already familiar to me from a few field seasons in the past, this time the season was a bit more special, as it was the last excavations at Tulliniemi for the time being. After these three weeks, the work will be finally moved indoors for archaeologist Jan Fast to use in his dissertation. But there's still a plenty of time to make more discoveries!

Edelweiss pin of Gebirgsjäger.


Outline of the filled Soviet trench.
The focus of the first week was on a trash dump on the northern coast of Tulliniemi, where you can still see many remains of the battlements dug by Soviets in 1941. Some trenches were later used by Germans as trash dumps, and one of such sites was chosen for our excavation.

While we have excavated numerous trash dumps before, this one was interesting especially as an archaeological feature, as the outline of the trench could be clearly seen from the line of rust on the ground. The finds obviously followed this feature and were very numerous and diverse.

Possibly because of the dry ground, many finds made of paper were very well preserved, including cigarette boxes, fragments of newspapers and books and finally even long-desired bottle labels! Other finds included typical items such as toothpaste tubes, combs, buttons and beer bottle caps, while among the more unique finds were chess pieces, an used condom and even a metal pin depicting edelweiss flower - used by Gebirgsjäger mountain rangers on their service dress cap.

While we managed to get much done during the week, rainy day on Friday set us back a little and a section at the end of the trench was left for the next week. Who knows what it still has in store for us!

For the daily recaps and photos of the most intriguing finds, I refer you to Jan Fast's blog, as I'm only writing weekly posts of my own experiences.


Cigarette boxes


Location: Hanko, Suomi

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