Oula Seitsonen took off yesterday to continue his field research with Jean-Luc Houle and others in the Western Mongolia Archaeology Project – and to finish his PhD manuscript on Lapland’s Dark Heritage while walking the steppes.

Mongolian research investigates the human-environment relationships and the social, political, and economic organizations of Bronze and Iron Age pastoral societies in the Zuunkhangai region (Uvs Province) of Mongolia through the use of landscape and settlement archaeology. Project’s previous field seasons have concentrated in the Khanuy Valley region north of the Khangai Mountais and in the Mongolian Altai, both areas where the Finnish pioneer explorers G.J. Ramstedt, Sakari Pälsi and J.G. Granö were also traveling in the early 1900s. Sakari Pälsi became in 1909 the first professional archaeologist to document the iconic monumental features of Mongolian Bronze Age, khirigsuur grave mounds and deer stones, amongst lot of other archaeological sites. After these early Finnish explorers a century passed until Oula started retracing their footsteps, and plans to continue doing so.

Oula Seitsonen has been this week busy workshopping in Sweden and Finland. On Tuesday and Wednesday he took part in the seminar Memories of Violence and Oppression: Developing new uses of difficult heritage sites and landscapes in the Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden, presenting the “‘#InariDig: Public archaeology and augmented reality in engaging with difficult heritage”.

Using #AugmentedReality and #PublicArchaeology in representing the #WW2 #Heritage in #Lapland #DarkLapland #VirtualReality pic.twitter.com/YwhaV0934a

— Oula Seitsonen (Sakarin-Pentin Ilarin Oula) (@oulaseitsonen) May 16, 2017

Rest of the week went in the Helsinki Digital Humanities Hackathon 2017 #DHH17. Oula was working through the week as part of the cultural heritage team consisting of humanists and computer scientists, marveling the theme “Heritage Sites and Participatory Cultures in the Digital Age“. Team came up with interesting observations related to the official and unofficial heritage in Finland and their uses based on various kinds of data, such as comparisons of participatory Geocaching and Pokemon Go sites to the nationally recognized heritage sites. The preliminary observations made during the week will be pursued further in the future.

Geocaches: Left) All geocaches (red), caches within 200 m of RKY sites (black); Right) Kernel Density Estimation of the latter.

Vesa-Pekka Herva, Oula Seitsonen and Suzie Thomas are in the Inari area for a few days to make some plans for the eagerly anticipated #InariDig2 coming up in August. We have had a short visit to Utsjoki, checked in with our colleagues at Siida museum, and are making contact with local community members close to the sites we are considering investigating in the summer.

19th -century church in the village of Utsjoki, in Utsjoki municipality; the northernmost municipality in both Finland and the EU. Photo: Suzie Thomas

Along with us is Dr Tehmina Goskar, a museum professional and researcher from Cornwall, UK, who is carrying out research under the Change Makers programme funded by Arts Council England.

You can follow our work and adventures via our Twitter feed @DarkLapland and also follow Tehmina at @tehm.