Prehistoric necropolis discovered at the Arctic Circle?

An entirely unlikely place for a necropolis (archaeologists themselves say so), yet some new research has led a group of scholars from the University of Oulu in Finland to speculate on the existence of a large prehistoric hunter-gatherer cemetery just 80 km south of the Arctic Circle at the Tainiaro site. This is according to Ari Hakonen, Noora Perälä, Samuel Vaneeckout, and Jari Okkonen of the Finnish university, together with their colleague Tuija Laurén (independent researcher), in a scientific paper published last Dec. 1 in the journal Antiquity of Cambridge University Press.

Despite the absence of human remains (bones, skeletons), dozens of pits from the fifth millennium B.C.E. have indeed been interpreted, at least tentatively, as burials, with the idea that Tainiaro is one of the largest Stone Age cemeteries in northern Europe and raising questions about the cultural and subsistence practices of prehistoric societies in the Subarctic.

The Tainiaro excavation has been known since at least 1989, thanks to the work of Tuija Laurén, and its events date back at least to the fourth millennium B.C, when nomadic Mesolithic hunter-gatherer-fishers from the far north of Europe began to show the first signs of sedentarism in the form of permanent habitation and village aggregation and in the use of pottery (and at least until the beginning of the second millennium AD, evidence of large-scale activity is absent). Throughout most of prehistory, northern Fennoscandia was occupied by people practicing a predominantly gatherer lifestyle. Large Mesolithic and Neolithic hunter-gatherer-fisher cemeteries in the forests of northern Europe, including the important sites of Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov in northwestern Russia, Zvejnieki in Latvia, and Skateholm in Sweden were first recognized in the 1950s and 1960s and continue to attract the attention of archaeologists. At the two largest known sites, Zvejnieki and Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov, the burials of 330 and 177 individuals, respectively, have been found. However, because modern quarries disturbed both sites prior to archaeological investigations, the total number of burials in each cemetery is estimated at 400 or more. Outside of these necropolises the largest, it is rare for mortuary sites to contain more than 20 burials and most contain only a few. Graves were typically furnished with more organic than inorganic objects.

As for Tainiaro, archaeological investigations between 1984 and 1991 recovered more than 32,000 artifacts, and the site is briefly mentioned in many monographs, theses, and research articles. Yet a comprehensive overview of this Tainiaro site has never been published, and its interpretation as a necropolis remains problematic. The Tainiaro site is located on a sandy terrace, 79 m above sea level, on the bank of the Simojoki River, 33 km from the Baltic Sea coast, between the plains of Ostrobothnia and the hilly areas of southern Lapland. The region was covered by a continental ice cap until about 10,300 years ago, and post-glacial soil rebound continues to the present day.

Some 27 years after the last season of the original excavations, new fieldwork was initiated at Tainiaro in 2018 by a team from the University of Oulu. The fieldwork involved relocating previously excavated areas and performing a small focused excavation with the goal of assessing features identified by georadar. The complete archive of 190 field drawings from the 1984-91 excavations was georeferenced in GIS, along with the 6969 artifact units, some containing hundreds of individual artifacts, detailed in a 547-page handwritten and typewritten paper archive.

Careful examination of field drawings made during the original excavations revealed 127 possible pits of various sizes, shapes and contents at Tainiaro; however, none are visible on the surface. The most characteristic and frequent shape, with at least 36 examples, is rectangular in plan with rounded corners and measuring 1.5 to 2.2 m long, 0.5 to 1 m wide, and 0.5 to 0.8 m deep. Most of these rounded rectangular pits contained evidence of burning, with occasional stone fragments and burned bones, and some contained artifacts. Traces of red ochre, typical of known burials, were found in 23 pits, but only in small concentrations, patches or streaks.

Based on shape and content, each feature was ranked on a scale of 1 to 6. Pits of the most regular and frequent shape, that is, a depth of 0.5-0.8 m containing red ochre and artifacts, are designated as class 6. Features of irregularly shaped and indistinct pits lacking evidence of ochre and artifacts are designated as class 1. Other pits are assigned as classes 2-5. Based on this classification and the distance of each pit from a reference point in the eastern excavation zone, pits were assigned a unique identification.

Evidence of in situ burning, in the form of reddened sand mixed with ash and charcoal, was found in 24 pits of the 53 pits attributed to classes 3-6. In 10 of these pits the evidence of burning was limited to the upper layers. In nine other pits, traces were found both at the base of the pits and also higher up: in five of these cases the traces indicated distinct and clearly separated burning episodes. Another five pits had evidence of burning limited only to their bases. Ash and charcoal, fire-cracked rocks, and reddened sand are sufficiently frequent in some of the pits in Classes 3-6 to justify the hypothesis that some of them functioned primarily as hearths or some other (non-funeral) pyrotechnic activity.

Because of the natural acidity of the local soil in northern Fennoscandia, organic material rarely survives more than a few millennia. In some local Stone Age burials, the arrangement of bodies and sometimes even decayed teeth and bones have been preserved by the inclusion of red ochre. Since ochre was used only sporadically at Tainiaro, the burial hypothesis cannot rely by default on such preservation, but instead the morphology of the pits themselves must be considered. Comparison of Tainiaro pits and Stone Age burials with almost complete organic decomposition elsewhere in Finland provides initial support for the burial hypothesis. The number of pits at Tainiaro is unusual, however. However, archaeologists note, when considering burials containing more than one inhumation, a stronger similarity between the pits at Tainiaro and burials in other northern European cemeteries becomes evident. While multiple burials within a single pit are rare, larger cemeteries generally contain several examples, and at Zvejnieki the number of pits with multiple burials is as high as 26 out of 277. The poor preservation of bones at Tainiaro makes it impossible to confirm the presence of multiple burials, but it is possible that the largest and most distinct pits could have contained several individuals. However, comparison with verified burial sites shows that a large number of confirmed graves have irregular or indistinct planes, the equivalent of classes. These graves include burials of children and animals. Unfortunately, the archaeologists write, “none of the similar northern European sites have been published in sufficient detail to assess the number of irregular anomalies similar to pits that were not considered graves. Overall, comparison with northern European cemeteries suggests that many of the pits at Tainiaro are burials, with slightly wider than usual pits resulting from variations in local or regional practices for single burials or from a higher than usual number of multiple burials.”

But if the pits are burials, how do we explain the burn marks within them? Some of the smaller burned areas could result from a mixed fill, but evidence of in situ burning could reflect other activities. However, the purpose or significance of such fires is not well understood.

According to scholars, for all the above reasons, Tainiaro should be considered a cemetery site. If correct, this would be one of the largest sites with Mesolithic features in northern Europe. As for the number of burials at the site, however, only estimates can be given. Assigning minimum and mean probability estimates for the six different classifications of pit features ( Table 1 ), multiplying the decimal probability by n per class, and estimating the total extent of burial based on previously excavated areas and spaces left in between, we arrive at a total estimate of 115 to 200 burial pits, of which between 26 and 44 were excavated. The number of individuals buried is probably slightly higher, as multiple burials are a recurring phenomenon at similar Stone Age sites. Considering the irregular burial pits commonly observed at other sites, this estimate could be increased by up to a third, reaching about 300 individuals in total. Testing a wider range of related activities, however, would further increase the research potential of Tainiaro. The hypothesis put forward two years ago that the site was a kind of stone laboratory certainly allows for further analytical approaches. Surface hearths could also indicate habitation activity. So, aIn light of all these possibilities, according to scholars at the University of Oulu, Tainiaro should not be considered a monofunctional site intended exclusively for burial. There is no reason to believe that the people whose practices formed the Tainiaro site viewed the site in this way. “Many questions about Tainiaro remain unanswered,” the archaeologists conclude. “For the time being, however, the idea that a large cemetery appears to have existed near the Arctic Circle should make us reconsider our impressions of the north and its peripheral position in world prehistory.”

Pictured is one of the pits interpreted as ancient burials.

Prehistoric necropolis discovered at the Arctic Circle?

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