Pirjo Uino

Ella Margareta Kivikoski (25 May 1901 in Tammela–27 July 1990 in Helsinki) was the first woman in Finland to defend her Doctoral thesis in Archaeology in 1939. Many duties in the State Archaeological Commission of Finland provided a good basis for her research career. In 1941 she received a docentship (an associate professorship) at the University of Helsinki in the Department of Archaeology of Finland and the Nordic Countries. In 1948 Kivikoski was appointed to the chair of the same department, becoming at the time the only female professor, the second in sequence, at the University of Helsinki and the first female professor in
archaeology in the Nordic countries. After the appointment to a professorship, Kivikoski was called to the Finnish Academy of Sciences, becoming its first female member. She retired in 1969. The Finnish Iron Age was Kivikoski’s main speciality. Her published scientific production is wide, consisting of several monographs, articles and edited works. Her major publication is Die Eisenzeit Finnlands, the catalogue of Iron Age artefacts found in Finland, that is still used today. Kivikoski was well networked in the learned societies, internationally active and awarded many foreign distinctions of honour. Kivikoski was demanding, even abrupt, as a professor but many remember her warm interest in her students. She guided students to fieldwork, especially at Iron Age sites on the Åland Islands where she also initiated the study of Iron Age houses in Finland. Kivikoski kept to culture-historical approaches and comparative typological analyses of artefacts and solid remains.

‘East archaeology’, research cooperation in the areas of present-day Russia, has been one part of the research activities of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Helsinki in the post-war era. The first steps were taken as part of the state-controlled Finnish-Soviet scientific cooperation between the 1950s and 1970s, but Glasnost and Perestroika opened up a whole new range of opportunities in the 1980s and 1990s. Initially, the collaboration focused primarily on the Karelian Iron Age, but soon expanded to the other periods of prehistory, the Stone Age and the Early Metal Period. A significant part of the research has been conducted
in areas near Finland – the Karelian Isthmus and Ingria, the Karelian Republic, and the Kola Peninsula – but several other parts of Russia have also attracted attention over the years. The purpose of this article is to present the history of these ‘eastern’ studies from the beginning to the early 2020s; cooperation has currently been stopped as a consequence of Russian politics, which culminated in the war in Ukraine in 2022.

After World War II, a Committee for Cooperation in the Fields of Science and Technology between the USSR and Finland was founded in 1955, based on an agreement between the two countries. The committee included a working group for archaeology, founded in 1969, which provided an operational environment for scholarly cooperation: symposia, projects, exchange of researchers, and so on. In Finland, the working group operated within the frame of the Committee for Cooperation in the Fields of Science and Technology of the Foreign Ministry, while in the USSR it operated under the Academy of Sciences. The activities were planned in the sphere of the history of the Finno-Ugrian peoples and their relations with the Slavs, as well as investigations into the ethnogenesis of Slavs, Finno-Ugrians, and Balts in the 1 st millennium AD. Also the subject of Russian-Finnish relations in the 8 th –14 th centuries was involved. The breakdown of the USSR in 1991 terminated the strictly institutional model of cooperation. The Committee for Cooperation in the Fields of Science and Technology between the USSR and Finland, as well as the working groups, were dissolved in 1992. A new organisation, the Commission for Scientific and Technical Cooperation between Finland and Russia, was established. The new situation provided opportunities for a new kind of activity based on a broader multidisciplinary concept, while, on the other hand, the financing of symposia and other activities met with difficulties because there were no longer any established channels for financing. However, the Academy of Finland and the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) took care of the exchange of researchers between our two countries for some time and also provided funds for one symposium held in Helsinki. After 2004, there was a 10-year break in the tradition, as the Finnish party could not arrange a symposium because of various difficulties. Finally, in 2014, a 14 th symposium was arranged in Helsinki. This article summarises the activities connected to the archaeological cooperation referred to above.