Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
Finland
fellow
Kerkko Nordqvist
Home institution
University of Helsinki
Country of origin (home institution)
Finland
Discipline(s)
Archeology and prehistory
Theme(s)
Agriculture & Food
Identity
Migration
Fellowship dates
›
Biography
Kerkko Nordqvist is an archaeologist with a PhD from the University of Oulu (2018) and holds the Title of Docent in Archaeology at the University of Helsinki; he is currently also a Visiting Professor of Archaeology at the University of Tartu. His main fields of research are prehistoric and boreal hunter-gatherer archaeology, and the interaction of forager and farmer populations. His research interests include prehistoric material cultures and their manufacture, distribution and exchange, economy and subsistence, as well as culture and society particularly in eastern and northern boreal Europe. Nordqvist is the author of over two hundred publications.
Research Project
Corded Ware pastoralists in a boreal hunter-gatherer environment: cultural traditions and identities in the 3rd millennium BCE Finland
Corded Ware culture (c 2900–2200 BCE) changed the Stone Age life of the Finnish coast when it arrived 5000 years ago, bringing potentially a new language, genes, material culture, burial practices and subsistence to an area previously inhabited by hunter-fisher-gatherers. Kerkko Nordqvist’s project studies the establishment and adaptation (even – disappearance) of Corded Ware communities in Finland in general and the regional differences within the country in particular: how these groups responded and coped with the challenges of the northern environment, both socio-cultural (local hunter-fisher-gatherers) and natural (boreal biogeographical region under climate change)? Key questions are: 1) How did the Corded Ware societies react to the local natural and cultural environments? 2) What kind of networks and relationships prevailed between different communities? 3) Are there dissimilarities in development within and/or between different regions of Finland and what is the reason for them? Even if the focus is on past events, the themes of this project – cultural encounters in the age of climate change – are also relevant in the world of the 2020s.
Research Interests:
Prehistoric archaeology of the northern boreal zone, hunter-fisher-gatherer societies, early agricultural communities, material cultures, craft traditions and cultural change