The Northern Way: Graves and Funerary Practices in Corded Ware Finland

Abstract

AbstractThe 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.