Ella Kivikoski (1902–1990) began her career in the 1930s, and by the time she was appointed professor of archaeology at the University of Helsinki in 1948, she had become an undisputed expert on the Iron Age. Kivikoski was not drawn to broad theories or far-reaching conclusions; she stressed the importance of sound classification and typology as opposed to transient interpretations. Kivikoski’s 1948 systematization of Finnish Iron Age materials (Suomen Rautakauden kuvasto, two volumes published in revised form as Die Eisenzeit Finnlands in 1973) have remained standard works. Kivikoski also published a prehistory of Finland in 1961.

Of Kivikoski’s contemporaries, Ville Luho was a leading expert on the Mesolithic Stone Age, and C.F. Meinander succeeded Kivikoski in the chair of archaeology at the University of Helsinki. Meinander’s doctoral thesis of 1954 was on the Bronze Age, and one of his main contributions was to revise the hitherto accepted view of depopulation, which preceded the assumed colonization by the ancestors of the Finns in the early Iron Age. With reference to the early–Iron Age ceramic traditions of southern Finland, Meinander argued that there had never been any interruption of settlement in the Bronze Age or early Metal Age. These suggestions were borne out by radiocarbon dates in the 1970s. Meinander’s conclusions became the basis of a new “theory of continued settled” that replaced the older model of colonization formulated by Alfred Hackman in 1905.

The 1960s and 1970s witnessed growing collaboration between archaeology and the natural sciences. The introduction of radiocarbon dating was of prime importance, but the ongoing tradition of cooperation with palynologists and paleobotanists was also established. Cooperation with Quaternary geologists had been established since the late 1920s, and new chronological syntheses of data related to Stone Age settlements were presented in the 1970s by Ari Siiriäinen, who succeeded Meinander as professor of archaeology in Helsinki. Torsten Edgren’s work includes classifications and syntheses of Stone Age materials, notably sub-Neolithic Jäkärlä Ware and Corded Ware pottery in Finland. Edgren has also published a basic general presentation of Finnish prehistory.

Iron Age research was carried on by Aarni Erä-Esko and Pirkko-Liisa Lehtosalo-Hilander, the latter conducting extensive excavations and material studies of the Luistari cemetery at Eura in southwestern Finland. Her publications of the Luistari finds in the 1980s and 1990s have become new standard works on Viking-age material culture. A leading younger expert on the Iron Age is Jussi-Pekka Taavitsainen, professor of archaeology at the University of Turku in southwestern Finland. His predecessor was Unto Salo, a specialist in the Bronze Age. The chair of archaeology at the University of Turku was established in the 1960s, and academic teaching in archaeology has also spread to the University of Oulu in northern Finland.

The 1980s and 1990s were years of diversification in Finnish archaeology. Along with its official legislated role of protecting and salvaging prehistoric and historic antiquities, and despite the vagaries of government funding, the National Board of Antiquities also carried out research projects related to specific goals, particularly in Iron Age studies. At the University of Helsinki, Meinander sought to introduce aspects of “the new archaeology” as opposed to the nontheoretical and traditionally typological orientation of the discipline. On the other hand, growing collaboration with the natural sciences introduced a strict positivist trend that left little room for syntheses of cultural history. Siiriäinen, in turn, established active international contacts and research projects abroad, particularly in the Third World, with particular emphasis on cultural ecology and related processual approaches. The 1980s also saw the advent of postprocessual developments, with a return to the goals of historiography and anthropology. A variety of new archaeological approaches also emerged at the universities of Turku and Oulu in the late 1990s.

Jüri Kokkonen

References

Kivikoski, Ella. 1954. “A.M. Tallgren.” Eurasia Septentrionalis Antiqua, supplementary volume.

———. 1960. Tehty työ elää: A.M. Tallgren 1885–1945. Helsinki.