Two Burial Traditions of the Crusade Period on the Karelian Isthmus and in Ladoga Karelia
Abstract
The Ladoga Archaeological Expedition of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera; MAE) RAS, St Petersburg, jointly with the University of Turku (Finland), has recently excavated several funerary sites on the Karelian Isthmus and in the Ladoga Karelia region. The materials yielded by these investigations enable the reconsideration of information from previous excavations. Among the recent exceptional finds are the burials on the slopes of the Sänkinmäki and Pihlajamäki hills in the northern extremity of the island of Kilpolansaari. The material from these sites, as well as radiocarbon dating, demonstrates that in the 13th century, a part of the medieval Karelian population, at least in the Ladoga Karelia region, continued to practise archaic rites that included
cremations on the ground surface.
