From Coast to Inland Activity Zones in North Finland During the Iron Age
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Jari-Matti Kuusela From Coast to Inland Activity Zones in North Finland during the Iron Age his study examines the Iron Age of North Finland and focuses T thematically on the economic weight of the coast during the Early and Middle Iron Age (500 BC–AD 600) and the shift of this weight to the inland zone during the Late Iron Age (after AD 600). Geographically the centre of attention is, as far as the coastal area is concerned, between the current towns of Raahe and Tornio while the inland zone contains the current provinces of North Ostrobothnia (inland areas), Kainuu and Lapland (Fig.1). In the case of North Finland, there is little use in distinguishing the Viking Age as a single period of study as this arbitrarily defined time period between 800 and 1050 AD is inextricably tied to periods both preceding and following (see Ahola & Frog). Therefore in this study this time period is merely included in what is referred to as the Late Iron Age – i.e. in this context a time period after AD 800. Problems of Research into the Iron Age in North Finland The Iron Age of North Finland is not a widely studied period, which is why it is still more often than not omitted from studies concerning the Iron Age of what is today Finland. Archaeologists of the University of Oulu have had a long-standing interest in this phase of prehistory. This research reached its zenith during the 1980s and 1990s, when significant archaeological excavations were carried out on several Iron Age sites, such as the Rakanmäki cemetery and the activity site in Tornio, the Välikangas cemetery in Oulu, the Tervakangas cemetery in Raahe and the Länkimaa cemetery in Kemi.1 After this, however, the interest has somewhat waned up until recent years and, as a result, the Iron Age is still largely an unknown period in North Finland. The problems of the Iron Age in what is today North Finland are to a large degree problems of research tradition. On the one hand, archaeologists’ lack of interest in the Iron Age of North Finland over the last two decades or so and disregard of the fact that the Iron Age cultural milieu in North Finland 219 Jari-Matti Kuusela Fig. 1. Research area (North Ostrobothnia, Kainuu and Lapland) with major coastal towns marked. The thatch indicates the area referred to as coastal in the text. 220 From Coast to Inland significantly differs from that of the Iron Age core areas of South Finland (such as Tavastia and Finland Proper) on the other (see Laakso), have both contributed to the fact that, even though great strides were made during the late 1980s and early 1990s, we still know very little about the Iron Age in the area now under scrutiny. I argue that the archaeological research conducted in the 1980s and 1990s has been hampered by misunderstandings and a false premise concerning the period, resulting in a situation where North Finland is still implicitly and explicitly considered to have been more or less ‘wilderness’ during the Iron Age, with little or no human impact. The false premise that has misguided Iron Age research in the north is crystallised in a dualistic approach dealing with ethnicities regarding ‘Finns’ (e.g. Huurre 1986: 149) and the Sámi. This results in a patterned research where archaeological material is divided between the ‘Finns’ and the ‘Sámi’ and then interpreted on the basis of this dualism.2 This has limited the grounds on which interpretations have been made – if the archaeological material has been deemed ‘Finnish’ the equivalents have been sought from the core areas of Southern Finland and when they have been interpreted as ‘Sámi’, eyes have been turned to the historically known and somewhat ambiguous ‘Lapps’. As the archaeological record in the north does not conform to either analogy, the period has remained largely unknown. Therefore often vague and ambiguous ethnicities should be abandoned in archaeological research and archaeology should not label data with ethnic terms. Instead archaeological material should be interpreted on its own merits and analogies for interpretation should be sought from general social theories utilised in other social sciences like anthropology and sociology as these have been formed in the process of studying human societies. This approach will enable an understanding of the processes behind human action, of which archaeological remains are a direct result. The basis for the theoretical framework I use is tied closely to the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, whose thoughts I see as having direct significance for archaeological research. It is important to ground archaeological research in a theoretical framework which has a strong link with reality – i.e. studies concerning real societies – because this prevents ‘ivory-tower empiricism’ where seemingly logical interpretations based on observed data are disconnected from reality because they are based on false assumptions stemming from ignorance of how the processes under study truly work (see Elias 1983; Bourdieu 1990a: 14–15; O’Brien 2007: 56–57, 66). Therefore, before turning to the archaeological data relevant for this study, I must digress and make clear the theoretical premises I operate with. Theoretical Background: Material Culture Reflects Society’s Social Space Material culture, i.e. the material remains that form archaeological data, is the direct result of human action. Human action on the other hand can be viewed from many angles but I operate on the principle that it is a form of communication with which past societies have signalled aspects of their 221 Jari-Matti Kuusela social world (Kuusela 2009; 2011; 2012a; Kuusela et al. 2010). By utilising material culture it is possible to signal aspects and properties of individuals, groups, places etc. without the need for verbal exchange, providing that the material ‘code’ is understandable to those observing it. To take a very simple example – a barrow built at a specific location may signal, for example, the following aspects pertaining to the location: a) this is a burial site; b) this is a sacred site; c) spirits live on this site, etc. Furthermore this communication may be taken to the level of individuals; for example, the size, shape or location of the barrow may further signal aspects about the individual buried within (see Kuusela et al. 2010; Kuusela 2011). This should not be taken to mean that every aspect of material culture has been geared functionally towards this communication but rather that material culture, and more importantly how material culture has been used, always signals aspects of its users and therefore can be labelled communication. This is so because material culture is an excellent way to convey messages pertaining to the roles and qualities of individuals without the need for verbal verification of one’s status or role in one’s society with each acquaintance, and the more complex the society becomes and the more roles there appear in the social network of that society, the more need there is for such instant communication (Morris 1995: 431; Neitzel 1995: 396), or, as the proverb says: a picture says more than a thousand words. This is a plausible position to take as it fits well in a theoretical framework corresponding with observed human behaviour. The concept of fields, familiar from the sociological writings of Pierre Bourdieu, becomes especially useful in this context. According to Bourdieu (Bourdieu 1985: 69–70; 1989: 16) the social space of a society is composed of social differentiation and is populated by fields encompassing specific areas of action. The position of agents in these fields is commensurate with their field-specific capital, i.e. how successful they are in the action represented by the field (Bourdieu 1985: 69–70; 1984). Fields exist relationally in the social space, forming what I call a society- specific field configuration, which means that in each society the fields of action have a different meaning and different position in the social space, i.e. different societies value different forms of action in differing ways (Kuusela & Saunavaara 2011: 207–208). As the capitals of all fields form the symbolic capital of the society (Bourdieu 1977: 183; 1989: 17; 1990b: 118–119; 1998: 48, 102), this means that the composition of symbolic capital, and therefore by definition the field configuration, varies between individual societies. Nevertheless close proximity and continuous contact make it possible for the field configurations and symbolic capital of neighbouring societies to begin to resemble each other, though they never become identical. All this ties directly into archaeology for the reason that as archaeological material is a direct result of human action it is also a direct result of agents acting in the fields, from which follows the argument that archaeological data are, in fact, what remain of past societies’ fields and field configuration and the social space that produced it. As it is possible that close contact between societies will cause their respective field configurations to resemble 222 From Coast to Inland each other, it can be deduced that regularities observed in archaeological data become important and can plausibly be assumed to pertain to the social communication of the societies of whose actions the archaeological record is an outcome. Before the Late Iron Age: Coasts It would be difficult for an archaeologist to discuss a single prehistoric time period without reference to periods either preceding or following the one under scrutiny and it would be exceedingly difficult to do so with the archaeological material that forms the data used in this chapter. I must therefore ask the reader to bear in mind the fact that, in order to say something about the Viking Age, a significant portion of this chapter will be devoted to examining periods that precede the Viking Age, as only taking this long perspective will reveal and contextualise the processes that were in effect during the Late Iron Age.