Fleeting Remains of the Comb Ceramic Ruskiasuo

While it's winter now and the ground is frozen for a few more months, it's again a good time to look back on past excavations. While I've written about many of my devours past summer, there's a particular one that I still want to share with you. It also serves as a good example of the endangered past that slowly erodes and escapes our grasp.

Excavation in progress.
In June, I took a little detour from my work in Satakunta to join archaeologists Jan Fast and Janne Soisalo in Kouvola. There they had planned the first public archaeology project in the history of the city and had 15 participants ready to sink their hands into the soft sand of Ruskiasuo dwelling site. While the site had never been excavated, it was already known to archaeologists since its discovery in 1980s. Based on the finds made at that time by a local archaeology enthusiast, the site was dated to the time of Early Comb Ceramic culture ca. 5200–4450 BC.

Early Comb Ceramic pottery.
As the site had been discovered by the edge of an old gravel pit, it was already known that a portion of the site was possibly destroyed in the past. It was now time to find out how much still remained and to figure out the best way to approach the site in future excavations. As the site was also in danger due to the eroding banks of the gravel pit, we started with the most vulnerable parts with a goal to secure the site from further erosion.

Over the course of a few days, we opened two test trenches at two different gravel pits next to each other and it was my task to lead the excavation of the trench B. However, it soon became evident that even while the collapsed bank of the trench B showed a decent amount of Comb Ceramic pottery, the excavation area itself was short on finds. After finishing with the trench, we determined that this part of the dwelling site had been destroyed due to gravel taking and only a fraction remained.

Luckily for us, the trench A was more fruitful and reveled a reasonably vast area of finds consisting of ceramics, quartz objects and burnt animal bones. As a pleasant surprise, the pottery finds were not solely Comb Ceramic pottery, but there was also a modest amount of early Corded Ware finds, making the site even more interesting for further research.

Such further research will already take place next June, when Jan and Janne will return to the site yet again. If you want to be involved in further discovering what the site has to offer, you can sign up as a participant in early 2020. While my plans for the coming year are still in progress, I hope I'll get a chance to continue working with this interesting site!

Projection of the sea level around the site ca 4800 BC.

Location: Kouvola, Suomi

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