Markku Makivuoti AN IRON· AGE DWELLING SITE AND BURIAL ...

Fig. 3. The regular pentagon constructed in the boulder field . Photograph: Katrimaija Miikivuoti.est plough, the only patch to survive intact beingthe burial mound area of the boulder fieldmarked off by conservation notices.In spite of the devastation caused to the landscapeand the terrain by this ploughing operation,it did offer an excellent, if unexpected, opportunityfor investigating the area surrounding theprehistoric remains. This ploughing involves theuse of a harrow of corkscrew design to break upthe surface of the ground and raise better soil tothe surface for the use of the new seedlings to beplanted there. The humus layer is broken up toa depth of 15-20 cm in strips 50 cm wide andabout 2-3 metres apart, exposing the originalground surface at these points. For an archaeologistthese ploughing traces offer a network ofreadymade preliminary excavation trenches. Theonly drawback is that where a cultural horizonmay exist it will be broken up in the process.A number of evenings spent surveying theploughed area at Rakanmaki in August 1984served to reveal for the first time one interestingfact concerning the study of prehistoric remainsin the north of Finland. Immediately adjacent tothe field of burial mounds there appeared to bean extensive prehistoric dwelling site, for thesurvey showed clear concentrations of charredstones, iron slag and compressed clay in theploughing furrows on the eastern slope of theRakanmaki ridge. One isolated find was made,of an iron currency bar of the 'Norrland' type.This find in particular aroused the interest ofthe archaeologists, as only one iron currency barof this kind had previously been unearthed inFinland, and that at Saltvik on the Aland islands(Kivikoski 1973: abb. 984, 127). The northernmostfinds in Sweden similarly had been fromBri:ista in Angermanland, with none reported atall in Northern Sweden (Hallinder 1978: 30- 37;Th1'tlin 1973). It was largely this find, made in anarea adjacent to a series of burial mounds, thatprompted the decision to begin archaeologicalinvestigations. The first phase of the work .comprisedexcavations at the assumed dwelling site,these then being extended in the second phase tocover the burial mounds themselves.Several hundred square metres of the dwellingsite on the sandy eastern slope of Rakanmakihave been studied to date. The dwelling sitebegins almost at once at the edge of the burialmound field and extends as far as the edge of thebog below. Two terraces can be distinguishedwithin the inhabited area, the lower boundary ofthe upper terrace following the 17.5 m contour37