LOCATING FINLAND IN PREHISTORIC EUROPE
In terms of climate, geography, culture and language, Finland is situated on the polar front. Linguistic elements and cultural patterns from diverse geographical areas have met on the present-day Finnish soil and have shaped the conditions of life ever since the prehistoric era, which extends from 9000 BCE until 1200 CE when Christianity was introduced to Finland.
According to the latest archaeological findings, the oldest dwelling site is situated at Orimattila in southern Finland. The finds of the Myllykoski site consist of quartz and burnt bone, and it is located close to another significant Mesolithic settlement in Ristola in Lahti (southern Finland). According to the Finnish archaeologist Hannu Takala, Ristola is a multi-period site that dates back to 8170-7880 BCE. Almost 1600 shards of Corded Ware pottery excavated there date to many millennia after its first settlement. A third site worthy of mention is located at Kuurmanpohja in Joutseno, south-eastern Finland; the excavation finds include flint artifacts and an item comparable to arrowheads of the Sigir type dated to 8710-8490 BCE (Takala 2009: 31).Consensus prevails among archaeologists (see Takala 2009) that colonization spread by moving to the north-west and into northern Finland. Human settlement has been continuous throughout the whole postglacial period. There is no way of knowing the ethnicity and language of these nomadic peoples, not to mention the cosmology, religion and world-view they adhered to. Chronologically, the Mesolithic Stone Age (9000-5000 BCE) was followed millennia later by Early Neolithic settlements, some of which presented typical comb-pattern decorated pottery originating from eastern Russia. It is assumed that the language spoken by the population of the Early Neolithic from the middle of the fourth millennium to the Late Neolithic (2000-1700/1400 BCE) was related to the Finnic languages that developed around the Baltic Sea.
Linguists and archaeologists agree that representatives of the comb-decorated-pottery culture settled down before the forefathers of present-day Baltic, Germanic and Slavic peoples who spoke Indo-European languages arrived (Häkkinen 1996: 142- 4). Archaeological research has shown that the development of cultural traits among the population was not straightforward after the comb-decorated-pottery period. The end of this cultural stage, characterized by a deteriorated style of to the methodological requirements within the fields of archaeology and linguistics, the analytical tools and interpretative frames provided by the history of religions also need to be taken into account when approaching the vast conceptual terrain of prehistoric religion. Moreover, scholarly traditions within the field of comparative religion testify to the notion that religion as a category is susceptible to ideologically biased interpretations. Thus, special attention needs to be paid to the ideological commitments and rhetorical choices of scholars working in this field.
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