Located in southwestern Finnish Lapland, some 80 km south of the Arctic Circle, the Tainiaro gravefield was first discovered by locals in the 1959, but the extent of the cemetery has only gradually been revealed by researchers.
In a recent article published in the journal Antiquity, archaeologists at the University of Oulu now estimate that the Tainiaro site has at least 120 graves, possibly as many as 200, five times more than originally thought.
According to Aki Hakonen, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oulu, Tainiaro is not only a rare example of a large Stone Age burial ground, it may be the largest of its kind in the north of Europe.
"Previously, only a few cemeteries with 20 graves were known in Finland. This is a place where there are apparently several hundred," he explains.
The researchers were surprised by the size of the site, as large cemeteries were thought to be more typical in areas much farther to the south.
Hakonen believes that the findings made at Tainiaro call for a reconsideration of the role of the north in the prehistoric world.
"The research raises questions about why such a site exists so high up on the map and whether there are similar cemeteries yet to be discovered in the dozen-or-so river valleys of the Bay of Bothnia," he pointed out in an Oulu University release.
The Finnish Heritage Agency carried out excavations at Tainiaro in the 1980s and 1990s, but the research remained unfinished and unpublished. Based on those findings, there were 40 graves.
Now, an overall picture of the material has been compiled using advanced geospatial software, field measurements and test excavation results. However, there is still much to explore.
Ceramics and greenstone artifacts
The identification of approximately 40 features at Tainiaro as graves had long been only a preliminary interpretation.
The acidity of the local soil destroys organic matter, including human remains, within two millennia, so Stone Age graves leave behind only the shapes of pits and traces of red ochre, which is scarce at Tainiaro.
For this latest study, the pits found at Tainiaro were compared with 869 Stone Age graves from northern Europe, located in 14 cemeteries. Researchers found that the pits at Tainiaro closely resembled the structure of the better-preserved grave pits in more southerly limestone-rich soil, indicating that they too are likely graves.
The research results are still preliminary, because the features cannot be definitively proven to be graves.
However, a few precious items typically placed in Stone Age graves, for example unworked greenstone, have been recovered from the presumed graves.
Radiocarbon dating of charcoal samples from the remains of campfires show the site was in use 6,500 years ago.
Examples of the oldest type of pottery ever found in Finland was also discovered next to the graves. Only a few pottery fragments have been found in grave fill soil, indicating that pottery was not buried with the dead.
The first use of pottery in Finland predates the Tainiaro site by a few centuries.
A wider context
In the Stone Age 6,500 years ago, site located on a remote tributary of the Simojoki River about 40 kilometres inland, was still on the shore of Bay of Bothnia.
"It was a flat forest terrain with a sandy beach. Since then, the land has risen so much that the seashore is now very far away," explains Aki Hakonen.
Southern Lapland and the coasts of the Gulf of Bothnia were inhabited at the time by the Early Comb Ware ceramic culture, a hunter-gatherer society, whose true identity is still being sought. Tainiaro was not just a cemetery, though, numerous traces of fire and the crafting of stone objects also suggests habitation at the site.
According to Hakonen, the far northern shores of the Bay of Bothnia are generally viewed as having been an undeveloped area, especially compared to the rest of Europe.
"These current discoveries strongly connect Tainiaro to the fact that during the Stone Age people moved widely and exchanged ideas and goods with each other," he points out.
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