Papers by Marja Ahola
Time and Mind, 2024
During the Mesolithic and Neolithic, foragers dwelling in the
Eastern Baltic, Scandinavia and... more During the Mesolithic and Neolithic, foragers dwelling in the
Eastern Baltic, Scandinavia and Fennoscandia regions buried
some of their dead on lake islands or other coastal sites.
Based on ethnographic accounts, these sites are often under-
stood as liminal places where water separates the lands of
the dead and the living. In this paper, we take a more rela-
tional view of place and suggest that a particular combina-
tion of spatial perception of landscape and the dynamic
nature of coastal sites might have contributed to the social
agency of these places, resulting in their use as places for
ritual activity. By exploring two Mesolithic–Neolithic burial
places, Donkalnis and Spiginas (western Lithuania), with sen-
sory archaeological and artistic approaches, we suggest that
the ancient foragers of this region buried human bodies in
these locations to be part of the place itself. Similar to other
depositional acts, this could have been done to mark the
location or communicate with the surrounding world.
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Moving northward: Professor Volker Heyd's Festschrift as he turns 60, 2023
In 2021, a large mural depicting a Corded Ware vessel was painted on the urban suburb of Myyrmäki... more In 2021, a large mural depicting a Corded Ware vessel was painted on the urban suburb of Myyrmäki in southern Finland. According to the artists working with the art piece, the mural serves as an informative sign for a nearby Stone Age settlement site while also aiming to create a sense of belonging for the 'rootless people of Myyrmäki'. In this paper, I argue that the mural can be understood as a memoryscape, and in this sense, it acts as a materialization of the heritage-making process. At the same time, however, the mural combines prehistoric archaeology with contemporary topics such as antiracism and climate activism.
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Plos One, 2022
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Time and Mind, 2022
Throughout history, humans have told stories to one another. Although these stories have largely ... more Throughout history, humans have told stories to one another. Although these stories have largely disappeared over the course of time, they have sometimes left material remains, for instance in the form of rock art. However, rock art might not be the only materialization of prehistoric storytelling practices. On the contrary, if made active again, other prehistoric artefacts might also bring past storytelling practices back to life. In this paper, we examine how storytelling might have taken place in Late Mesolithic Finland (c. 6800-5200 cal BCE). As a case study, we investigate a zoomorphic wild reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) antler artefact from southern Finland, the so-called 'Lepaa artefact', with multidisciplinary methods arising from the traditions of experimental archaeology, 3D technologies, and artistic research. As a result, we suggest that Mesolithic storytelling might have been entangled with ritual practices and accompanied by performances that resemble traditional shadow theatre.
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Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 2022
During the 4th millennium BC, an intensive artefact circulation system existed among the hunter-g... more During the 4th millennium BC, an intensive artefact circulation system existed among the hunter-gatherer peoples of northeastern Europe. Along with other goods, ring-shaped ornaments that were mainly made of different kinds of slates or tuffites were commonly distributed. Although commonly referred to as 'slate rings', these ornaments consist mainly of fragments of rings. In this paper, we suggest that the 'slate rings' were never meant to be intact, complete rings, but were instead fragmented on purpose and used as tokens of social relationships relating to the gift-giving system. By refitting artefact fragments together, analysing their geochemical composition, micro details, and use-wear, we were able to prove that these items were not only intentionally fragmented but also likely worn as personal ornaments. Moreover, ED-XRF analysis of 56 of the artefacts showed a correlation between their geochemical characteristics and stylistic detailing, suggesting different production phases or batches. Comparative data analysis confirmed the provenance hypothesis that the majority of the analysed objects, or at least their raw materials, were exported over hundreds of kilometres from the Lake Onega region.
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Tabellarius, 2005
(Popular paper in Finnish)
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Norwegian Archaeological Review, 2020
Although not often discussed in an archaeological context, religion plays an important role in hu... more Although not often discussed in an archaeological context, religion plays an important role in human migrations by working as an anchor of collective identity and distinction among the migrants. By establishing permanent religious structures – such as burials – the newcomers can also use religion as a tool to indicate an enduring presence in their new homeland. Remarkably, such practices can also be seen among the groups connected with the Corded Ware complex that migrated and settled in the eastern and northern Baltic Sea region roughly 5000 years ago. According to the material remains of the mortuary practices associated with this complex, these people did not travel alone; they carried with them a novel religion. Defined in this paper as a ‘steppe-originated religion’, this belief system continued mortuary practices known from the Pontic Steppe, while also incorporating material and ritual elements from different regions over the course of time. Despite this syncretism, the core ideas of the religion nevertheless persisted. As these ideas seem to relate to the mixing of past and present generations, as well as the merging of homeland and new land, this religion could have provided much-needed aid and comfort for a people on the move.
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Entangled Rituals and Beliefs: Religion in Finland and Sápmi from Stone Age to contemporary times. Monographs of the Archaeological Society of Finland 8, 2020
This chapter approaches two ritual sites located in the territory of modern Finland from the pers... more This chapter approaches two ritual sites located in the territory of modern Finland from the perspective of heritage-making. Taatsi is an offering site used by indigenous Saami starting from the 10th century AD, whereas Jönsas is a cemetery site connected with the Stone Age populations but used also in the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age. What is common to these sites is that they have been used and reused for long periods and gained new meanings also in the contemporary world. By using a site-biographical approach, we suggest that past and present ritual activities, along with other meaning-making processes, such as town planning and youth gatherings, have all been an important part of the heritage-making processes of the Taatsi and Jönsas sites. Accordingly, we propose that archaeological sites should be seen as active places that have obtained changing meanings during and after their original use. Based on the life histories of these two sites, we further suggest that the core idea of heritage existed already deep in prehistory.
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Entangled Rituals and Beliefs: Religion in Finland and Sápmi from Stone Age to contemporary times. Monographs of the Archaeological Society of Finland 8, 2020
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Quaternary International, 2020
Burial practices in the large area of the north-eastern European and especially the western Russi... more Burial practices in the large area of the north-eastern European and especially the western Russian forest zone are not as well-known as contemporary sites in, for example, western or southern Europe. To fill this gap in our knowledge of north-western Russian Stone Age hunter-gatherer burial traditions and to better understand the similarities and differences in burial traditions between these areas, a new Russian-Finnish collaboration was launched in late 2016. The main aim of this collaboration is to systematically investigate previously excavated mortuary materials from north-western Russia and study them in the broader context of hunter-gatherer funerary practices in north-eastern Europe. As a first case study, we revisited the burial finds from the Stone Age site of Kubenino, a multi-period site with at least six inhumation burials. Burials have been excavated here since the 1930s, but only three have been published so far. Here we describe all the Kubenino burials and present the results of new analyses, namely the osteological study of bone artefacts, the traceological study of flint artefacts, and new radiocarbon determinations. According to the novel radiocarbon data, the Kubenino burials date to the emergence of the Neolithic, which in this region is marked by the appearance of the first pottery-using hunter-gatherers. As our new analyses show, this transition towards the Neolithic is not only present in the everyday life of these hunter-gatherer groups but also resulted in subtle changes in the funerary realm. These changes include, for example, the intentional breakage of grave goods and the introduction of new artefact forms for animal raw materials that were present already in pre-pottery burials.
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Praehistorische Zeitschrift, 2020
The Corded Ware complex represents an archaeologically defined culture whose people inhabited lar... more The Corded Ware complex represents an archaeologically defined culture whose people inhabited large areas of Europe during the third millennium BC. Although Corded Ware graves are known also from Finnish territory– the northernmost area of Corded Ware expansion –these graves represent a special challenge and methodological problem for archaeological research. This is because unburnt bone material is generally not preserved in the acidic soils of Finland, and Finnish Corded Ware complex graves have typically been recognized mainly due to the occurrence of a Corded Ware assemblage (i. e. complete pottery vessels, adzes and ground-stone axes). Furthermore, since most Finnish Corded Ware grave discoveries have been made during the early and mid-20th century, they generally lack good-quality archaeological documentation. Despite these challenges, new insights into Finnish Corded Ware burials can be gained by thoroughly investigating the region’s burial customs and material culture as an entity and comparing them to the Corded Ware complex of the eastern Baltic region and beyond. Finnish Corded Ware graves not only follow the standard material culture and burial customs of the Central European Corded Ware complex but show additional evidence of wooden chambers and laid-out furs, and they may have occasionally even possessed small mounds. However, even though the material culture of the Finnish graves follows traditions present in the central European Corded Ware complex, the grave custom is far from uniform. Hence, Finnish Corded Ware graves represent a melting pot of ideas, ideologies and connections, likely reflecting differing origins of relocating people. Aside from being influenced by the Corded Ware populations of nearby regions, a close link to contemporary local hunter-gatherers seems to have been present, too.
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Archaeology and Analogy. Papers from the Eighth Theoretical Seminar of the Baltic Archaeologists (BASE) Held at the University of Helsinki and Tvärminne Zoological Station, Hanko, Finland, November 30th–December 2nd, 2017. Interarchaeologia 6, 2020
This paper concerns Stone Age hunter-gatherer mortuary practices from the perspective of prone bu... more This paper concerns Stone Age hunter-gatherer mortuary practices from the perspective of prone burials, i.e., the rare tradition of burying the deceased on their stomach. By using prone burials from the Neolithic hunter-gatherer site of Kubenino (northwestern Russia) as an example, the paper aims to understand whether the burials differ from the normative burial rituals of the respective period and region, by exploring how common the practice of prone burial was
among the Mesolithic and Neolithic hunter-gatherer populations of the northern European boreal zone. Furthermore, by comparing the Stone Age prone burials to inhumations in other body positions, the paper will explore whether this practice can be defined as a deviant mortuary practice. As an additional tool of interpretation, we will also use ethnographic analogues from historical hunter-gatherer and pastoralist populations of northern Eurasia.
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Fornvännen, 2017
This paper concerns the material culture of Finnish Mesolithic and Neolithic hunter-gatherer mort... more This paper concerns the material culture of Finnish Mesolithic and Neolithic hunter-gatherer mortuary practices. Although the perishable materials – including the human remains – are poorly preserved, the graves nevertheless contain large numbers of objects made of unperishable materials. In this paper, this largely unpublished material is complied for the first time into a single study. As a grand narrative, the find material is viewed in the light of change and continuity in the
material culture of death among ancient hunter-gatherers. The general trends in how certain materials or artefact types were used in mortuary practices are also explored. In conclusion, it seems that although most of the finds derive from the graves of the Neolithic Typical Comb Ware Culture (c. 3900–3500 cal BC), the artefacts are not merely imported exotic raw material, but are also packed with symbolic overtones.
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Antiquity, 2018
The Late Neolithic Corded Ware Culture (c. 2800–2300 BC) of Northern Europe is characterised by s... more The Late Neolithic Corded Ware Culture (c. 2800–2300 BC) of Northern Europe is characterised by specific sets of grave goods and mortuary practices, but the organic components of these grave sets are poorly represented in the archaeological record. New microscopic analyses of soil samples collected during the 1930s from the Perttulanmäki grave in western Finland have, however, revealed preserved Neolithic animal hairs. Despite mineralisation, the species of animal has been successfully identified and offers the oldest evidence for domestic goat in Neolithic Finland, indicating a pastoral herding economy. The mortuary context of the goat hair also suggests that animals played a significant role in the Corded Ware belief system.
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Acta Archaeologica, 2017
Stone Age people handled their dead in various ways. From the Late Mesolithic period onwards, the... more Stone Age people handled their dead in various ways. From the Late Mesolithic period onwards, the deceased were also buried in formal cemeteries, and according to radiocarbon dates, the cemeteries were used for long periods and occasionally reused after a hiatus of several hundred years. The tradition of continuous burials indicates that the cemeteries were not only static containers of the dead but also important places for Stone Age communities, which were often established in potent places and marked by landscape features that might have had a strong association with death. The paper explores the tradition of burials in cemeteries exemplified through Jönsas Stone Age cemetery in southern Finland. Here the natural topography, along with memories of practices conducted at the site in the past, played a significant role in the Stone Age mortuary practices, also resulting in the ritual reuse of the cemetery by the Neolithic Corded Ware Culture.
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Fennoscandia Archaeologica, 2016
Human skeletal remains have been found very rarely in Stone Age graves in Finland. The rare prese... more Human skeletal remains have been found very rarely in Stone Age graves in Finland. The rare preserved bones or teeth are extremely fragile and fragmented. Typically, Stone Age graves are identified only because of distinct ochre features, sometimes associated with grave goods of stone and amber. In many cases, the ochre features have been interpreted as graves because of their size, shape and the artefacts found. Moreover, the lack of organic material has also complicated the dating of the graves. In January 2015, we systematically collected and analysed this sparse and fragile human osteological material. Human teeth or bone were identified from nine sites mainly located in the southern and central parts of Finland. Our analysis shows that adults and subadults were buried in these studied graves. We also found that prehistoric people experienced childhood stress, indicated by the linear enamel hypoplasia in some of the teeth. They also had caries, although we did not observe dental calculus.
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Thanatos, Feb 2015
Finnish Stone Age earth graves are often referred to as “simple pit graves”, fostering the illusi... more Finnish Stone Age earth graves are often referred to as “simple pit graves”, fostering the illusion of an
equally simple funerary rite. In this article, the complexity of Stone Age funerary practices and grave
structures are explored by reinterpreting the Middle Neolithic burial ground of Kukkarkoski in the light of
ritual practice theory. As can be observed from the Kukkarkoski material, the Finnish ochre graves show
evidence of a complicated mortuary practice, where the deceased were cared for in various ways.
Furthermore, at the Kukkarkoski burial ground new graves were made in connection with old burials,
indicating a close connection with past generations. This combination of care and connection seems to be
at the core of Neolithic funerary rites for earth graves.
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Muinaistutkija, 2007
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Conference Presentations by Marja Ahola
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Papers by Marja Ahola
Eastern Baltic, Scandinavia and Fennoscandia regions buried
some of their dead on lake islands or other coastal sites.
Based on ethnographic accounts, these sites are often under-
stood as liminal places where water separates the lands of
the dead and the living. In this paper, we take a more rela-
tional view of place and suggest that a particular combina-
tion of spatial perception of landscape and the dynamic
nature of coastal sites might have contributed to the social
agency of these places, resulting in their use as places for
ritual activity. By exploring two Mesolithic–Neolithic burial
places, Donkalnis and Spiginas (western Lithuania), with sen-
sory archaeological and artistic approaches, we suggest that
the ancient foragers of this region buried human bodies in
these locations to be part of the place itself. Similar to other
depositional acts, this could have been done to mark the
location or communicate with the surrounding world.
among the Mesolithic and Neolithic hunter-gatherer populations of the northern European boreal zone. Furthermore, by comparing the Stone Age prone burials to inhumations in other body positions, the paper will explore whether this practice can be defined as a deviant mortuary practice. As an additional tool of interpretation, we will also use ethnographic analogues from historical hunter-gatherer and pastoralist populations of northern Eurasia.
material culture of death among ancient hunter-gatherers. The general trends in how certain materials or artefact types were used in mortuary practices are also explored. In conclusion, it seems that although most of the finds derive from the graves of the Neolithic Typical Comb Ware Culture (c. 3900–3500 cal BC), the artefacts are not merely imported exotic raw material, but are also packed with symbolic overtones.
equally simple funerary rite. In this article, the complexity of Stone Age funerary practices and grave
structures are explored by reinterpreting the Middle Neolithic burial ground of Kukkarkoski in the light of
ritual practice theory. As can be observed from the Kukkarkoski material, the Finnish ochre graves show
evidence of a complicated mortuary practice, where the deceased were cared for in various ways.
Furthermore, at the Kukkarkoski burial ground new graves were made in connection with old burials,
indicating a close connection with past generations. This combination of care and connection seems to be
at the core of Neolithic funerary rites for earth graves.
Conference Presentations by Marja Ahola
Eastern Baltic, Scandinavia and Fennoscandia regions buried
some of their dead on lake islands or other coastal sites.
Based on ethnographic accounts, these sites are often under-
stood as liminal places where water separates the lands of
the dead and the living. In this paper, we take a more rela-
tional view of place and suggest that a particular combina-
tion of spatial perception of landscape and the dynamic
nature of coastal sites might have contributed to the social
agency of these places, resulting in their use as places for
ritual activity. By exploring two Mesolithic–Neolithic burial
places, Donkalnis and Spiginas (western Lithuania), with sen-
sory archaeological and artistic approaches, we suggest that
the ancient foragers of this region buried human bodies in
these locations to be part of the place itself. Similar to other
depositional acts, this could have been done to mark the
location or communicate with the surrounding world.
among the Mesolithic and Neolithic hunter-gatherer populations of the northern European boreal zone. Furthermore, by comparing the Stone Age prone burials to inhumations in other body positions, the paper will explore whether this practice can be defined as a deviant mortuary practice. As an additional tool of interpretation, we will also use ethnographic analogues from historical hunter-gatherer and pastoralist populations of northern Eurasia.
material culture of death among ancient hunter-gatherers. The general trends in how certain materials or artefact types were used in mortuary practices are also explored. In conclusion, it seems that although most of the finds derive from the graves of the Neolithic Typical Comb Ware Culture (c. 3900–3500 cal BC), the artefacts are not merely imported exotic raw material, but are also packed with symbolic overtones.
equally simple funerary rite. In this article, the complexity of Stone Age funerary practices and grave
structures are explored by reinterpreting the Middle Neolithic burial ground of Kukkarkoski in the light of
ritual practice theory. As can be observed from the Kukkarkoski material, the Finnish ochre graves show
evidence of a complicated mortuary practice, where the deceased were cared for in various ways.
Furthermore, at the Kukkarkoski burial ground new graves were made in connection with old burials,
indicating a close connection with past generations. This combination of care and connection seems to be
at the core of Neolithic funerary rites for earth graves.
This thesis presents a compilation of material remains and archival information from Stone Age earth grave sites and research material as a whole. This approach aims to demonstrate that, whilst Finnish Stone Age earth graves primarily lack human remains and other perishable materials, we can still gain important new insights into Stone Age funerary practices. Consequently, the objective of this thesis lies in systematically studying the earth grave materials, attempting to understand the rituals behind them, and using these data to interpret mortuary practices and cosmology.
Based on the results described and discussed in this thesis, the Stone Age mortuary tradition in the Finnish territory represents a complex set of practices that includes not only the archaeologically visible earth grave tradition, but also other means of ritually disposing of the dead body. Accordingly, when we refer to Stone Age mortuary practices in the Finnish territory, we are not speaking of ‘inhumations in simple pit graves’, but of the material remains of complicated rituals that give meaning to and place death within the cosmology of those people. Indeed, the systematic archaeological research conducted in this thesis revealed that both adults and subadults were given earth graves, a tradition also known from better-preserved Stone Age cemeteries in nearby regions of Finland. Similarly, Stone Age people used — and did not use — certain artefacts or raw materials in their funerary practice, in clearly ritualised ways and, for example, to emphasise the identity of the community.
When comparing the data in this thesis to other ritual practices known from that specific period and region, Finnish Stone Age earth graves seem to encode an animistic–shamanistic cosmology. Indeed, similar to, for example, prehistoric rock art sites, the Stone Age hunter-gatherer cemeteries are also situated next to topographic features possibly connected to supernatural powers, whilst the graves themselves were furnished with objects that might have been considered living. Simultaneously, an intentional connection to past generations was also sought by positioning new burials amongst older ones or by reusing old cemeteries. To conclude, even if the Finnish Stone Age earth graves primarily lack human remains and other perishable materials, the graves are not as poorly preserved as one might assume. On the contrary, when the earth grave material was investigated as a whole and subjected both to new analyses and theoretical understanding, we gain important new insights into Stone Age mortuary practices and cosmology.