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The article analyses representations of maritime archaeology in 136 newspaper articles published in Helsingin Sanomat and Hufvudstadsbladet between 2017 and 2020. In both newspapers, maritime archaeology is dominantly represented through underwater (nautical) source material. This corresponds with the focus in Finnish maritime archaeological research where sites and materials situated on land receive less attention. Following on from these observations, it is argued that the maritime cultural heritage on land remains an untapped research potential. As increasingly attractive tokens of maritime heritage on land, special attention is paid to the phenomenology of lighthouses.

Marek Tamm and Laurent Olivier have put together a truly inspiring collection of writings that, for a history dilettante like me, provided a lot of food for thought. Firstly, it is necessary to not...

This contribution contends that, with the recent genetic revolution, archaeology has reached a new scientism, a development that could lead to fewer opportunities in the epistemology of archaeology to think difference. Drawing from discussions in slow science and the related idea that scientific importance is a matter of concern rather than fact, the contribution proposes that archaeologists start to cultivate methods of deceleration. In particular, as a measure to mitigate the epistemological effects of archaeology’s methodological acceleration, the contribution suggests the publishing of personal hunches, failed hypotheses, and so forth in addition to research results, and a cultivation of historical awareness in order to better anticipate possible epistemological effects of pursuing conflicting research interests.

The rapid development of natural scientific methods coupled with the recent popularity of new materialist philosophies in archaeological theory has raised discussion about the possibility of a return to empiricism in archaeology. While empiricism as a pragmatic philosophy is in line with archaeology’s hands-on character, the recent development has left some concerned about the vanishing role of vagueness and ambiguity in archaeological interpretation. In this setting, the exactitude of natural scientific methods is seen as a process of simplification that compromises the tacit dimensions of archaeological knowledge. This article discusses vagueness as an elementary part of all archaeological knowledge formation, with a particular emphasis on the role of perception and senses in finds analysis. Archaeological finds analysis is explored as an example of epistemologically vague and creative hypothesis formation.

The postglacial land uplift process has been modelled using two different approaches: by modelling the geodynamics of the earth’s crust (also referred to as Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA) modelling) or by fitting mathematical models to existing archaeological and geological data (referred to as semi-empirical modelling). Although the semi-empirical models are not based on the physical properties of the earth’s crust, they are easy to implement and can adapt better to local variations when compared to the GIA models. Semi-empirical models are fitted to the ice retreat data, eustatic sea level dynamics and lake isolation data on past shoreline displacement. As most of these data sources involve uncertainties, the land uplift process can be modelled probabilistically using the Monte Carlo method.

The rich and colorful human history of Eura has been documented based on archaeological findings. The oldest findings from Satakunta are associated with the Suomusjarvi culture, which may have had possible cultural and trading connections to East Karelia. The findings also show that there has been two different types of ceramics in the same place and time period indicating a chance that there have been two populations from different cultures at the same time. Numerous archaeological findings belonging to the later Kiukainen culture show the cultural dependencies with other archaeological finding sites in Finland. In this chapter, four archaeological examples that belong to either Suomusjarvi or Kiukainen culture are presented. Also a brief history of Scandinavian archaeology is presented and the roots of Finnish archaeology are discussed in this chapter.

The landscape reconstruction at four historical sites in Eura: Kolmhaara, Tyttopuisto, Kuninkaanhauta and Luistari is presented in this chapter. The reconstruction focuses on the time periods of the archaeological findings at respective sites: Stone Age in the case of Kolmhaara and Tyttopuisto, Bronze Age in the case of the Kuninkaanhauta and Iron Age in the case of Luistari. Landscape reconstruction results are discussed in relation with the radiocarbon datings of the findings at these sites. It is found that while for the Kuninkaanhauta the land uplift model locates the settlement at a favorable location with respect to the shoreline at approximately the same time period obtained using radiocarbon dating, there is a significant discrepancy between the two methods of estimating the age of the settlements for the Stone Age sites of Kolmhaara and Tyttopuisto.

During the recent ten years or so there has been a distinct shift in social sciences towards studying things as real objects in themselves instead of treating them simply as correlative (Meillassou...