Finnish archaeology: A love story
Abstract
I was so young when I first saw you. I close my eyes and the flashback begins. The decades disappear. I am standing by the Sederholm house and my parents are taking me to Stockmann to buy school clothes. Little did I know that for someone who was not Finnish how important Finland would be in my professional and personal life. This chapter is an individual and somewhat idiosyncratic tribute to the celebration of a century of archaeology at the University of Helsinki and to Finnish archaeology generally. In addition to being a personal homage, it examines the history of Finnish archaeology from an outsider’s perspective, pointing out how integrated Finnish archaeology has been with world trends in archaeology. It considers some of the big substantive issues in Finnish archaeology – i.e., cultural heritage, the occupying process of post glacial Finland, and the origin of monumental architecture. Finally, it tries to make a modest contribution using statistics and simulations to understand the early occupiers and the occupation process.
