Thirty glass squares and thirty marble squares prepared by Drake students,Ceramic sign prepared by a Drake student,
One square meter of shade cloth*,Landscape fabric pins to anchor shade cloth*,
Diamond tipped engravers, soil scoops, knife and other tools,Light meter,
Drake High pennant,Dell laptop computer with power and ethernet cables,
Data stick, assorted plug adaptors and modem adaptors, PolarTREC manual,Digital camera with battery charger, spare battery, card reader and cable,
Binoculars, hand lens, compass, global positioning system (GPS) with manual,Two books on Namibia, four scientific articles on hypolioths, one Russian novel,
Waterproof field notebook, pencils and pens, examples of student work,
Hat, hiking boots, socks, sunglasses, sunscreen, lip balm, bandana, water bottle,...
I am going to Namibia in April! Specifically, to the Namib Desert near Walvis Bay. I'll be there from April 18 to April 25.
It was out of print, and cost me $70 for a used one!
Why? And what does this have to do with the polar regions? If you remember my post on this site from March 23 2009, you'll remember that deserts and the polar regions have a lot in common.
Both are extreme environments that appear hostile to life at first, but are full of hidden surprises. Both have beautiful, other-worldly landscapes, remote and empty. Both are fragile environments sensitive to climate change. And, both have hypolithic cyanobacteria.
We found this one on White Mountain Peak in California, but they grow in Namibia too.
Cyanobacteria are some of Earth's oldest, simplest and toughest...
Back in the USA, I had to hit the ground running.
There were two weeks of school left, including final exams and graduation. My substitute teacher, Mr. Lazlo Toth, had done an awesome job of executing my lesson plans while I was gone. He is a retired high school teacher himself, and he really knows his stuff. I could not leave my school for this long without his expertise. THANK YOU, Lazlo.
It is impossible to overstate how much this trip has affected me. I wrote in my previous post about the importance to the modern world of doing this kind of research. In the end it comes down to that old adage "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
What about its importance to me personally, and to my students? I have learned that there is no substitute for field work....
Somebody finally asked me why we do this. What do we gain after tromping through the Finnish woods all day, or after finding a few flakes of quartz stone from 5000 years ago? Would it matter if we didn’t do it? In the short term, the answer is easy. Everything we do and everything we find (and don't find) gets put on maps and written about in reports that are sent to the Finnish National Board of Antiquities. They keep these maps and reports so that anyone can read them in the future.
Next, the graduate students and professors I am here with write articles about the sites and publish them in scientific journals that are read mostly by other archaeologists. This lets other archaeologists know what we're doing, and also helps the graduate students earn their Ph.D.s and the professors...
I usually have a very good sense of direction, because I know the sun rises in the east, crosses the sky to the south, and sets in the west. In Finland at this time of year it is usually cloudy and you can’t see the sun. Even when you can, it just goes in circles and circles around the horizon! There’s no telling which way is north, or even what time it is anymore. I get lost. We have entered the zone of perpetual day. "Yesterday”, "today” and "tomorrow” no longer mean anything.
From the balcony of my apartment
Oulu
I haven’t seen the moon or a star in a month. I no longer turn on the lights indoors, even at midnight. The curtains in my room don’t work to keep out the sun while I sleep. I miss the dark.
Yli-Ii School
Oulu University Campus, returning from the lab
...
I was invited by language teacher **Sirpa Walton** to visit the **Yli-Ii School**. Ms. Walton teaches English and Swedish to middle school students. All Finnish school kids study English and Swedish, and some take German or Russian as well. Ms. Walton is Finnish but is married to an Englishman, which is why her last name will sound familiar to my North American readers.
Yli-Ii School
Yli-Ii is a rural community about 40 miles from Oulu. It has a combined elementary and middle school with about 300 students. After they graduate from this place students can opt for high school or technical training in other towns.
I spoke with some middle school students about school in California, and showed them some pictures of Sir Francis Drake High School. They were attentive but shy, as...
Finland is famous for modern architecture, particularly the works of Eliel and Eero Saarinen and Alvar Aalto. Finland is less well-known for traditional buildings, but there are some very attractive ones here.
People who know me know which I prefer. But, judge for yourself! Here are photos of ten buildings, five traditional and five modern.
It's after ten at night
Helsinki
Helsinki
Now these serve as shops and cafes
Across the square from Oulu Cathedral
I have tried hard to be fair. Finland has plenty of massive, Soviet-style apartment blocks with no discernable landscaping around them. I have not photographed those. Similarly, Finland has plenty of tumble-down sheds in the woods. I have not photographed those either. Also, I have shown you two buildings from Helsinki and...
Every Wednesday we meet for lunch at the Kierikki Stone Age Center and build a fire inside one of the Stone Age row houses. Or, we cook outside if the weather is nice. We roast makkara (Finnish hot dogs) on sticks over the fire. It’s a lot of fun.
Kierikki Stone Age Center
Kierikki Stone Age Center
We also take "cookie breaks” halfway through every morning and every afternoon. It’s a disaster if nobody remembered to bring them. For adults in the modern world, we seem to be unusually concerned with where our next snack is coming from. I guess it’s a hunter-gatherer thing.
In the woods near Yli-Ii
I like this passage from the*** Kalevala*** (see my post from May 8.)
A young woman, just married, is about to leave the home she grew up in and go away to live with her husband’s extended family. It is a tense moment. Her mother lashes out at her unexpectedly:
‘Go along, sold maid
with him now, bought hen!
Now your hour is close
right at hand your time to leave
for your leader is by you
your dear taker at the doors
and the stallion champs the bit
and the sledge awaits a maid.
Since you were keen on money
quick to give your hand
eager to become betrothed
to try on the ring
keenly now get in the sledge
eagerly in the bright sleigh
quickly get away
and like a good girl be off!
Young maid, you scarcely
glanced to either...
It is important to understand changes in** sea level** in order to understand our research here! In most of the world, sea level is rising. That means if you live near the beach, every year the water gets a little higher and a little closer to your home.
Finland is different. Sea level here drops 6 millimeters each year. That’s about ¼ inch. Every 100 years sea level drops a couple of feet! The rate used to be even faster. Five thousand years ago, when the people we are studying lived on the coast, sea level dropped more than three feet every 100 years.
watching the ocean recede through binoculars
Some people born that year are still alive today
To understand why, you need to think back to the end of the last ice age. Finland and the rest of northern Europe was covered...
Today a vanload of us went on a field trip to Lapland to visit the Ranua Wildlife Park, also known as the "Arctic Zoo of Lapland.”
It is a small zoo that features only animals from Finland and/or the Arctic.
Strix uralensis
Bubo scandiacus
Most of the birds and animals were being lazy the way zoo animals usually do, but this capercaillie was trying hard to kill us through the wire fence. A capercaillie is sort of like a Finnish wild turkey. I found some capercaillie feathers in the woods on May 15 – see my post from that day.
Tetrao urogallus
Trying to kill us, apparently
Did you know that the **Arctic** was named after the constellation called the **Great Bear**? You probably know this constellation as the **Big Dipper**. It is named after the Brown Bear (***Ursus arctos***)...
Finland is one of the coldest, most northerly countries in the world. By some measures it may be the coldest country of all. Every winter the Baltic Sea freezes over!
Katajanokka, Helsinki
Ordinary ships cannot plow through sea ice without help. An icebreaker is a ship specially designed to operate in ice. It is built with a extra-strong bow (front of the ship) and is shaped so that the bow will ride up over the sea ice and then crush it. It leaves a lane of open water behind it.
You can see how the bow will ride up over the ice, crushing it
Every winter these icebreakers go to work, making sure that the ferries and cargo ships can get through from Europe to Finland. If they didn't keep the shipping lanes open, Helsinki and other ports would be closed.
Katajanokka, Helsinki...
Finland doesn't have quite the maritime tradition that Norway and England have. But, judging from the diverse and beautiful ships in Helsinki harbor, Finland isn't far behind!
Helsinki Harbor
Helsinki Harbor
Helsinki Harbor
Helsinki Harbor
Helsinki Harbor
Helsinki Harbor
These are not needed any more
Helsinki Harbor
**Helsinki** is not the ancient capital of Finland. Most of it was built in the 19th century, and so it has that century’s sense of grace and proportion.
Downtown Helsinki
More than anything, it reminds me of Boston, Massachusetts where I grew up. It is an attractive, harbor-oriented city great for walking around in.
Viewed from the steps of Tuomiokirkko Cathedral
Naturally, I headed to the waterfront first. I saw so many beautiful boats and ships there that I will have to save that topic for a future post on this site.
Tuomiokirkko Cathedral
(Lutheran Church)
The city has two cathedrals, each perched on a hill. They are both higher than any of the other buildings, so they face each other down across the city. The Lutheran one, Tuomiokirkko, is centrally located and is...
After two and a half weeks around Oulu, I wanted to see some of the rest of Finland. So, Friday after work and after our lab meeting was over I hopped on the overnight train to **Helsinki**.
People told me I could fly there for only slightly more money, but they were missing the point. I would have to get myself to the Oulu airport which is miles outside of town. Then I would have to wait around for a while in the airport. The flight would take slightly longer than an hour, and then I would have to get myself from the Helsinki airport into downtown Helsinki. By then it would be late at night, and all the things I wanted to see are only open in the daytime.
All aboard for Helsinki!
Instead, I took the train overnight. Trains go directly from one city center to the next, and...
A few of us went back to the Hiidenkangas site (see my post from May 18) where the big stone axe was found two days ago. We just walked the furrows left by the heavy equipment, eyes glued to the ground. In one morning we surveyed half the clearing –several acres - and found over 100 artifacts. Try doing that by excavating! We really got a lot of mapping done, and learned a lot about this settlement, thanks to those loggers. Each time we found something, (mostly fire-cracked rocks and quartz flakes) we put a red flag into the sand next to it. Sam Vaneeckhout would follow us with the GPS unit, marking where it was. The artifacts made distinct clusters on the ground, with large areas where there is nothing. It’s becoming really clear to us that artifacts weren’t moved any significant...
We found something pretty cool yesterday at the Hiidenkangas site. McGill University graduate student **Colin Nielsen **picked up a big **stone axe head** that was sticking out the ground! None of the blade part was showing – Colin didn’t know it was an artifact until he pulled it out. He knew to check because it was the right kind of stone.
Found at Hiidenkangas site by Colin Nielsen
It is almost a foot long and has nicely ground surfaces on both sides of the cutting edge. It is made of a kind of green igneous rock called ash flow tuff.
This side shows plenty of ground surface
You could use this axe for all kinds of things once it is hafted to a handle: chopping or splitting wood, or cutting holes in ice.
seen edge-on
It sure makes me want to go back to Hiidenkangas and...
Six or seven times now I have been to the **Kierikki Stone Age Center **in Yli-Ii, an excellent museum and center for research and education on this area’s prehistory.
Yli-Ii Finland
Outside the museum building are dozens of pits in the ground that were foundations of row houses for the hunter-gatherer people who lived here about 5000 years ago. Down on a sandy beach by the river the Center’s staff has reconstructed several of the row houses as they might have looked.
Kierikki Stone Age Center
Kierikki Stone Age Center
Kierikki Stone Age Center
Who were these people? We don’t know everything about them. For the lack of a better name, I will call them the Kierikki People. Their culture is also called comb ceramic culture because they made clay pots decorated by dragging...
Is Finland the wettest country on Earth?
This structure traps fish in the stream, but you can also use it as a bridge
I know there are places that get more rain than Finland. There are probably even whole countries whose average rainfall exceeds Finland’s. I’m not just talking about average rainfall.
I’m talking about what happens to all that water after it hits the ground.
You have to walk to one side of it
In most countries rain soaks into the ground and then discharges into rivers that run into the sea.
In the bog
In Finland, the ground is already saturated, so it can’t absorb any more water. Plus, everything is so flat that the water can’t easily find its way to a river. So it forms puddles and squishy areas everywhere.
On survey
If people didn’t dig drainage...
When the day is done, we’re not really "done.” Most evenings we meet in the University of Oulu’s **Archaeology Laboratory** after dinner.
In the lab
It is a pleasant place with a skylight, lots of tables, computers, and books, and chemistry supplies.
Mostly we meet here to process information. Archaeology is full of numbers.
In the lab
In the lab
Every site has a number to identify it. Within a site, each location has numbers telling where it is. Every soil core has a number, and several samples (numbered) are taken from each core. Every sample gets analyzed – more numbers! Every sample was collected at some depth beneath the Earth’s surface. Everything has to be dated, photographed, and described. The photographs are numbered. There are tables of information to be...
Today we began to uncover a large and impressive site on a hillside in Haukipudas, north of Oulu. It has at least fifty pits! Each pit represents a dwelling. Plus, the site is "loaded” with artifacts: you can see **quartz flakes**, **quartz cores** (bigger stones from which flakes were removed) and piles of fire-cracked stones that represent **hearths** all over the ground. Five thousand years ago the site was on a sandy beach near the river mouth, next to deep water, protected from the waves by a small headland and backed by forest. It’s easy to see why people lived there.
This site is called Hiidenkangas which literally means "Heathen’s Clearing” but has a connotation sort of like "Devil’s Hill.” Apparently the locals understood that the pits were dug by prehistoric...
Northern Finland has very little of the monumental public architecture from past centuries past that we expect to find in England, France, Germany, or even southern Scandanavia. Most of it looks more like Alaska than Europe. Everything is modern and utilitarian.
From the front
A happy exception is Oulu Cathedral, easily the most impressive and most visible building in town.
Back side
Built in the 19th century, it isn’t medieval. But its proportions and color are pleasing to the eye and well suited to its site.
Oulu Cathedral
The inside is spacious, cool, quiet and comfortable.
Oulu Cathedral
Oulu Cathedral
Back to archaeology tomorrow.
The **Arctic Circle** is an imaginary line that circles the North Pole. North of this line, there is at least one day each year when the sun never sets, and at least one night each year when the sun never comes up.
We don’t live on the Arctic Circle in Oulu, but you can almost see it from here! Today we went on a field trip to Rovaniemi, a small city in Lapland.
We spent some time at the Arktikum, a museum of northern culture that I found similar to the acclaimed Museum of the North in Fairbanks, Alaska (see my post from February 24.)
A museum of northern cultures in Rovaniemi, Finland
A few miles north of Rovaniemi the road crosses the Arctic Circle. There is a steel monument over the road that features a beam pointing 23 1/5 degrees into the sky – this is the highest the...
One of the best parts of the ***Kalevala*** (see my post from May 8) is in chapter 3 when young **Joukahainen** comes to challenge **Vainamoinen** to a singing contest. He introduces himself by crashing his horse-drawn sleigh into Vainamoinen’s sleigh:
shaft seized on shaft-end
traces tangled with traces
hames were jammed with hames
and collar-bow tip with tip.
Then and there was a full stop
a full stop, a pause for thought…
sweat poured from the collar-bow
from the shafts steam rose.
The old Vainamoinen asked:
‘Of what kin are you
coming foolishly forward
this way recklessly
smashing the hames of bent wood
the collar-bows of young wood
my sleigh to splinters
into bits the toboggan?’
*Then the young Joukahainen
uttered a word and...
We have glimpsed moose (Alces alces) a number of times now, but not up close and not for long. They are fast-moving, shy creatures. They don’t necessarily stand around and pose while you get your camera out.
The knife is for scale. It is about four inches long. When I took this picture I thought they were moose tracks, but now I'm pretty sure they are reindeer.
On the road to Rovaniemi
Probably the moose have had better success at watching us. The woods are full of them and full of their signs.
Who do you think!
in the Finnish woods
The English call moose "elk” which is really confusing to everybody because in North America there is a totally different animal (the Wapiti) that goes by that name. Finns call it hirvi. Also, Scandanavian moose are a different subspecies than...
