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In this article, I describe the 19th-century Finnish philosopher Johan Vilhelm Snellman’s ideas about Bildung, and show how this concept provided another basis for cultural heritage, which diverges...

The hobby of metal detecting has mostly been examined from the perspectives of archaeology and heritage administration. Although fulfilling archaeological needs, such an approach neglects the social analysis of this pastime. In 2019, we conducted a survey of metal detector enthusiasts and heritage professionals in Finland, the results of which are compared with those of a corresponding survey carried out in 2014. Within five years, metal detecting has become an established practice, and following the Finnish custom, registered associations for amateurs have emerged to organize the field. This longitudinal survey highlights its importance to civil society, with regard to the ways in which metal detecting develops as a hobby and as a means for amateurs to engage with heritage management.

Between 2018 and 2020 the Kipot ja kielet [Beakers and Speakers] project (KiKi) collected a typological database of archaeological artefacts in Finland and a typological linguistic database of Uralic languages. Both datasets will be accessible through a public online interface (URHIA) from 2021. The data will help integrate Finnish- and Uralic-speaking areas into global perspectives on human history.

The Finnish diplomat Harri Holma and his wife Alli, along with their son, art historian Klaus, created a private collection of 554 items. They acquired antique pieces and works of art in Berlin, Paris and Rome from the 1920s to the 1950s. The collection consists of Western and Southern European paintings, sculpture, furniture, textiles and tableware, dating from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. Initially the objects were acquired by the Holmas to decorate diplomatic residences, but eventually they came to form a deliberately assembled collection. Following Klaus’s death, Harri and Alli Holma donated the collection to the Lahti City Museum in the 1950s and the 1960s. Here the creation of the collection is first traced then followed on its journey to Finland, with a focus on the developing relationship between objects, family history and museum institution. The shifts in the collection’s narrative from hobby to an expression of grief, and finally to a formal museum assemblage and a subject of academic research generate epistemological tensions.

This article analyses modern interpretations of the medieval plan of the Bridgettine Monastery of Naantali, Finland. Instead of seeing the distinct spatial organisation as deviation from the Bridgettine norm, we consider it as an expression of a medieval process, by which monastic principles were re-conceptualised in order to be realised in material form. This perspective builds on the shift in thinking that has taken place in the study of medieval urban planning. Instead of being ‘organic’, meaning disorganised, medieval urban development has come to be considered as intentional, guided by general principles, although not in a manner that is always obvious to the modern mind. We concur that models such as St Bridget’s visions and the plan of Vadstena Abbey are important tools for reconstructing medieval monastic plans. Meanwhile, we propose that such models can also add latent and counterproductive baggage to this field of study by encouraging modern expectations of regularity within monastic architecture. If the designs of monasteries do not follow such models perfectly, discrepancies are often erroneously misconceived as indications of the builders’ insufficient skills and knowledge.

This project develops theoretical as well as methodological tools for the study of ancient wood, focusing on wood-use in North-eastern Europe within the period AD 1100–1600. The authors approach wood within the framework of object biographies and link the study of wooden artefacts with broader archaeological understandings of formation processes and environmental reconstruction.

Viipurin kultasepät ja ylellisyyskulutus keskiajalta 1700-luvun alkuun

This article analyses the historical formation of the metal-detectorist community in Finland, and, at the same time, shows that its homogeneity is somewhat illusory. The study is based on a questionnaire survey of amateur metal detectorists and professional Finnish archaeologists, and their attitudes towards each other. We combine a statistical examination of the structure and attitudes of the amateur detectorist community with an analysis of the discourse used to define and describe the hobby. In Finland, during the last decade, amateurs have become established as a heritage community with their own opinions, internal discussions, and forms of cohesion, and have attempted to become organized into societies. Examining the practice of detecting through the formation of heritage identities has crucial implications for how the challenges posed by metal detectorists are understood. Archaeologists should not just disseminate information on legislation and the scholarly requirements of archaeological material, ...

The concept of archaeological heritage management (AHM) has been key to wider archaeological research and preservation agendas for some decades. Many universities and other education providers now offer what is best termed heritage management education (HME) in various forms. The emphasis is commonly on archaeological aspects of heritage in a broad sense and different terms are often interchangeable in practice. In an innovative working-conference held in Tampere, Finland, we initiated a debate on what the components of AHM as a course or curriculum should include. We brought together international specialists and discussed connected questions around policy, practice, research and teaching/training, at local, national, transnational and World Heritage levels. In this article we take the Tampere discussions further, focusing especially on the meaning, necessity, implications and prerequisites of interdisciplinary HME. We offer our thoughts on developing HME that reflects the contemporary aspects and needs of heritage and its management. Sin financiación No data JCR 2018 0.314 SJR (2018) Q1, 77/329 Archeology (arts and humanities) No data IDR 2018 UEC

In this article we shed light on the position of Finland in conversations on the movement of unprovenanced cultural objects, within the national, the Nordic and the global contexts. Finland’s geopolitical position, as a ‘hard border’ of the European Union neighbouring the Russian Federation, and its current legislative provisions which do not include import regulation, mean that nonetheless has the potential to be significant in understanding the movement of cultural property at transnational levels. In particular, we outline a recent initiative started at the University of Helsinki to kick-start a national debate on ethical working with cultural object and manuscripts. We analyse exploratory research on current awareness and opinion within Finland, and summarize our current work to produce robust research ethics to guide scholars working in Finland. Although Finland has a small population and is usually absent from international discussions on the illicit movement of cultural property (save a few exceptions), we argue that it is still possible — and important — to affect policy and attitudes concerning art crime, provenance, and the role of stakeholders such as decision-makers, traders and the academy.

The question of the character of the premodern resonates throughout all archaeological research. The issue gives vibrancy to the conceptual framework in which traces of the past are examined, while...

The term ‘sexual metaphor’ consists of two elements: sexuality and metaphor. Both individually and together provide a perspective on material culture, and particularly on the current discussions on the relations between humans, things and materiality. Using such relatively common objects as cock taps, bollock daggers and redware pipkins as examples, the article examines sexual metaphors in material culture from the 15th to the 17th centuries. Sexual metaphors – such as touching a barrel tap, or thrusting a bollock dagger – did not have hidden meanings. Instead, as situations they express the entanglement of two domains of practice, connecting everyday objects and repetitive practices with conceptions of sexuality and, for example, humoral theories about the human body.

Medieval archaeology as a discipline is usually defined in relation to written sources and history, while other kinds of sources and scholarly traditions studying the same period are overlooked. With a small group of 14th-century crescent moon pendants of bronze from Finland as its focal point, the present article analyses the way in which archaeology connects with the visual arts and the discipline specialized in studying them, art history. Instead of some shared methodology, the inquiry proceeds along the tensions between the material and the visual. After the artefact and its technical qualities are examined in the framework of medieval material culture, the object is reduced, first, to an iconographical motif and, second, into a represented object. Third, the anthropomorphic features applied on the pendant are extracted and considered against the body of medieval grotesque art. This reveals how the visual is also an effective force in the sphere of material culture and human interaction. In the interd...

The old episcopal crosier of Turku Cathedral is a typical heritage item: a clearly identifiable object pregnant with traditions, including both medievalism and nationalism. A subject of the heritageisation process, it has become a familiar and discursive part of the past. The damaged and worn state of the crosier, which has lost its hook of silver, is a necessary indicator of the passage of time traced back to the Middle Ages. In 1931, the crosier was used as a model for a new one made for the Archbishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, which aroused public debate. The crosier was re-examined scientifically in 2009, and the results complicate its history, providing a new angle to its heritageisation. Not only does the fragmentary state of heritage objects destabilise the familiarity of the past, but also materiality as such is both a necessity and a risk for heritageisation.

Although the new approaches of biographical writing and current theories on photography have similar tendencies, there are also frictions between them. They stem from the commitment of biography to concentrate on a certain person and his or her life course, in my case the life of the State Archaeologist Juhani Rinne (1872–1950). I present photographs of Rinne as a case study and focus on the tensions between biographical narrativity and photographic bodies. The pictures of the Rinne collection seem to be linked to each other only by his name and body. The concept “image-body” is used to denote this discursive setting, where a relation between lived and represented bodies is conceived in terms of knowledge and truth. Rinne's image-body draws attention to work and its constitutive position in performing academic masculinity. It resonates with discourses on nationalism and civilized men. The repeated, orderly poses combined with formal dress go beyond a simplistic dichotomy of private and public.

While retaining the iconological method, the study of Finnish as well as Scandinavian medieval liturgical artifacts has moved towards the analysis of their wider visual context. Such a shift creates a tension between the traditional means of art historical inquiry, and the concerns of visual studies. The visual disseminates into the nonvisual, and this complex relationship with the semiotic, material as well as social, is crucial for approaching the artifactuality and visuality of the objects. From this basis, three points of interest emerge: the first is the production and materiality of liturgical artifacts, their three-dimensionality and its relationship with the technologies of producing, distributing and copying other three-as well as two-dimensional images. The second lies in the ways in which the liturgical equipment formed an effective whole, a signifying system in itself and together with the ecclesiastical practices. Third, in order to tease the artifacts out of the church context toward...

The relics of Turku Cathedral are remains belonging to the bodies of holy persons, different from ours, even today, although the cathedral is the see for the archbishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, and relics are not on public display. Among the relics of the cathedral, there is a fragment of a radius, which according to its authentica, belongs to St Henry. Relics and reliquaries were in the core of medieval piety, and the cult of saints had infused throughout the society. Due to their central position in culture, relics offer glimpses at a range of material, social and cultural phenomena related to medieval embodiment.The Department of Archaeology at the University of Turku began to study the finger relic of St Eric and other items in the assemblage of Turku Cathedral in 2007. Relics and reliquaries are being opened and documented and organic as well as inorganic samples are being taken for a range of scientific analyses. So far the project has concentrated on building a chronological chart of individual artefacts. The majority of the relics date to the fourteenth century, although much more recent datings have also been obtained. The challenge of the project is not to stop when a better understanding of materials, their origins and age has been accomplished, but to use the results as a steppingstone into a study of the practices of medieval relic veneration. Medieval bodies and those material processes which authenticate relics, or distinguish saints’ bodies from other human remains, are thus at the heart of this article discussing embodiment.

THE HISTORY OF NEW SWEDEN AND ITS MARGINS HISTORIANS HAVE SPILLED much ink regarding the seventeenth-century colony of New Sweden in the Delaware Valley, an area consisting of north Delaware, southwest New Jersey, and southeast Pennsylvania. A number of accounts have been written concerning the colony's history, Amandus Johnson's (1877-1974) two-volume The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware Valley (1911) being the most thorough. (1) In 1638, the commercial and political ambitions of Swedish statesmen led to the founding of New Sweden (Dahlgren and Norman 9). The Dutch seized the colony in 1655, and it was finally taken over by the English in 1664 (Munroe 16, 18, 40, 60-6). The colony's autonomous position ended in 1682. Written documents related to it are relatively well known, although not thoroughly studied, and the most important ones have been published (Waldron 327-9). Consequently, the political aims of the venture, its administration, ecclesiastical activity, and the social structure of the colony have been scrutinized in detail. Although written evidence of the native populations in the Delaware Valley (mainly the Lenape, but also the Susquehannock) is quite scarce, the relations between the settlers and the Native Americans have attracted the special interest of historians. Their relationship with the colonists is generally described as unusually friendly and peaceful, a symptom of the civilized attitudes of the Swedes. (2) However, in her detailed study Colonialism in the Margins: Cultural Encounters in New Sweden and Lapland published in 2006, the historian Gunlog Fur argues that peacefulness was more a consequence of the settlers' having no options. So few ships arrived from Sweden that the colony was continuously deprived of imported trade goods. It thus had to adopt the position of a middleman between the natives and other colonies, trading European products for furs and food from the Indians. The subsistence of the colony depended on the goodwill of the natives and their readiness to participate in trade (Fur, Colonialism 147). In a similarly critical vein, Amy C. Schutt has examined interaction between the native populations and European colonists in her book Peoples of the River Valleys : The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians, which appeared in 2007. As a symmetrical counterpoint to Fur's work, she focuses on the native side of the encounter by emphasizing Indian-Indian relations in addition to the colonist-Indian relations. Schutt argues for the"the social complexity of the peoples under investigation and the fluid nature of the groups involved" (3) instead of falling back on a single rigid category of the Native. Moreover, she analyzes how the various groups "responded to the warfare, epidemic disease, and other tumultuous events of the seventeenth century by developing and using networks of trade and other forms of exchange, creating new alliances, sharing territories, and in some cases merging with other groups" (31). Although both studies have been highly acclaimed, there has been some criticism that they did not take their projects far enough. For instance, John Smolenski's only complaint about Fur's book is that she does not provide enough examples and explicit comparisons between American and Nordic colonialisms (116), while Christina Snyder points out that Schutt's argumentation seems to imply that the Delaware Indians "were merely reacting to European prompts, rather than drawing upon millennia of culture and history to make decisions about themselves and the people around them" (785). Despite their slight shortcomings, these two studies are examples of contemporary critical historiography placing the encounter between the Swedish colonists and native populations in broader global context, whether contrasting them with Indian-Indian relations or comparing native-colonist relations with the situation in northern Fennoscandia. On both continents, state administration and colonists encountered indigenous peoples in a similar cultural framework and consequently observed and treated them more or less equivalently. …

This paper explores the influence of merchants operating out of Germany in medieval Turku by comparing the evidence of documentary reports and the quantity and distribution of imported pottery. The documents make it clear that German merchants were present in the town and generally keep themselves aloof from the local citizens. But the pottery tells a different and more subtle story of interaction and involvement in which all parties are potential drivers. The author calls into question the ethnic and exploitative models for a Hansa culture, preferring a post-colonial interpretation that allows us to see the formation of cultures that are hybrid and local in context.

Industrial archaeology, like any other branch of archaeology, forms a place where past and present meet. That how and to what ends the meeting place have been set up, defines the reciprocal binding between the two. In Finnish industrial archaeology, efforts to construct this stage have been very patchy, occasional and machine-centred. The first proper archaeological excavation at an industrial site took place in the 1980s, and the first Finnish article discussing the term was published as late as 1977. The situation has changed radically during the late 1990s and early 2000s, fieldwork has become more common and more studies are being published. One crucial factor in this development has been the growth of cultural tourism which has made technical and museological demands on industrial heritage. Industrial tourism as a whole is a new challenge to heritage management and industrial archaeology, because Finland has traditionally profiled itself as a country of nature tourism. However, the implicatio...

SUMMARY: There are six apostle spoons known from Finland. The northern European phenomenon of apostle spoons began at the end of the 15th century and was associated with the custom of giving a newborn baby a spoon as a gift. Their popularity faded at the end of the 17th century. They were never as much in vogue and produced in as great quantities elsewhere as in England. The article discusses aspects of their production and the most characteristic feature, the apostle figures. The Finnish apostle spoons were most probably made at the end of the 17th century and their hallmarks and other features seem to indicate England or continental Europe as their area of origin. The distribution map of the apostle spoons reveals that they are from the coastal areas of the southern andparticularly western Finland, buton closer examination amore complicated pattern emerges. It might be possible to connect their distribution with the economic rise of the Ostrobothnia region in the 17th century. However, the current state of apostle spoon research with its deficiencies does not allow satisfactory conclusions to be drawn.

Few archaeologists can claim to have written more than 300 articles in three different languages, let alone on topics as diverse as the philosophy of archaeology, the Ukrainian Eneolithic and the anatomy of the Iliad. Still fewer to have convinced Stalin, to have been convicted for homosexuality, and to have written a half-million copy bestseller about his years in prison. Only one archaeologist has. Despite all this, he is still poorly understood. At 76, Leo Klejn is still active. And still eager to have his voice heard.

Five wooden spoons dated to the Sub-Neolithic and Bronze Age are known from Finland. Four of them have an animal head carved onto their handles. The decoration has usually been seen as a sign of the spoons' totemistic and ceremonial use. Three of the spoons are stray finds, one comes from a possible cult site and one from a dwelling site. Two spoons are made of Siberian pine, which makes them objects of trade exchange; the westernmost natural occurrence of the raw material was in the Ural Mountains. Previous interpretations of the spoons have inconsistencies and rigid categorizations, which are reconsidered here from the perspective of cultural biographies of things. The functional aspects, ceremonial use and find contexts of the spoons are re-examined along with their connections to totemism, shamanism and ancient trade.

Colonialism establishes particular and sometimes surprising networks of desire between regions and groups of people. These networks produced new differences and created novel affective attachments and investments involving time and labor. Such a network connected Lapland and the colony of New Sweden in North America to each other. The desire of the Swedish statesmen to find new markets for the copper industry led to the founding of the colony in 1638. Although the venture was never a success, brass kettles were presented to Native Americans as gifts in great numbers, and they were also among the primary trade goods. The situation of New Sweden can be paralleled with the importance of brass kettles among the Sami in Fennoscandia. As in North America, the cessation of the Sami pottery tradition is associated with the adoption of brass kettles. Brass kettles were adapted to the native material culture and attached to different environments, practices, and values through the process of commodification. Their colonial and European macro-movements were met with conflicting micro-movements in the native lives. Kettles were invested with distinct social values and employed as currency, but they were also used in cooking, and buried with certain members of the native communities. These various ways in which kettles circulated among the native groups show how the colonial desire instituted shifting formations of value. In effect, brass kettles gave form to the desires of hunter-gathering cultures, made their subsistence strategies more efficient, and contributed to their social change, and thus, as artifacts, they bore transformative possibilities not actualized in European contexts.

Finnish archaeology has never been a contingent phenomenon, but closely, even if indirectly, entangled with the surrounding society and with wider international disciplinary currents. An essential characteristic of Finnish archaeology is its establishment and development in close connection with nationalism. Language has been central in Finnish nationalism and this reflects on the understanding of Finnish archaeology. Consequently, the history of Finnish archaeology can be presented as a narrative of intra-disciplinary progress circling around the question of the origins of the Finnish people and language. Before Finnish archaeology was established as a modern academic discipline with a defined identity, its institutional and economic support was state organized. Prior to the nineteenth century, the clergy was the most important social group studying ancient monuments, but during the nineteenth century the driving forces of the nationalist movement included the middle class, while in the late nineteenth century further social differentiation among Finnish archaeologists occurred. The archaeological community grew during the decades after the Second World War, but is still rather small. Before the Second World War, Finnish archaeology was highly international, partly because of contacts with Scandinavia and the Baltic countries, but this came to an end due to changes in international geopolitics and Finnish nationalism. The research has again become more international in the late twentieth century, while the importance of archaeology in the nationalist project and its cultural impact has weakened considerably.