Smi Peoples of the North : A Social and Cultural History (9781787381728) by Kent Neil

Author:Kent, Neil
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr
Published: 2018-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Early Sámi Ceramics

One of the principal crafts in which the Sámi excelled was ceramics. As early as around 5000 BC the so-called Pitted Ceramics, which originated in central Russia, began to spread north-westward and northward into eastern Karelia and thence amongst the Sámi who were settled in the area. From about 3900 to 3500 BC, the so-called Comb Style came to dominate, not only in Sápmi but from as far afield as what is present-day Latvia in the south, the Arctic Circle in the north, the Gulf of Bothnia in the west and the shores of Lake Onega in the east. This style of ceramic ware was in turn transplanted by the so-called Late Comb Ceramic, from about 3600 to 2800 BC. Strikingly, this style correlates with those regions of what is today north-western Russia and Finland, in which early proto-Finnic was spoken. Thus the spread of the Comb Ceramic Culture in Finland and north-western Russia seems to have been introduced and carried on by those who spoke the ancestral language of both the Sámi and Finnish people. An elk carving, decorated in this style, possibly the figurehead of a boat, discovered near Rovaniemi and dating back to 6000 BC, is a prime example of an object spread by the nomadic people who produced it, although in the Scandinavian part of the Sámi homeland no pottery from this period has been found. In any case, from about 1900 BC a dramatic shift occurred in the nature and style of the region’s ceramic ware because of the introduction of asbestos ceramics (as well as broad-edged arrowheads) which was soon in production not only in the Finnic-speaking areas but in much of northern Scandinavia as well.36

Already by the end of the late Stone Age and in the Bronze Age (from about 2000 BC to AD 400), asbestos, mined from mountainous quarries, provided a crushed raw material which, when mixed with clay, was used for pottery. Among the earliest ceramic remains to have been uncovered are those from Lovozero which date back to around 1700 BC. Others, from Vardö, have been dated to about 1300 BC.37 Textile decoration was impressed upon the pottery which, by the final century of the first millennium, seems to have been of two specific types—Risvikkeramik from the north Norwegian coastal region and Kjelmøykeramik from the north-east of Fenno-Scandia, in particular the north of Sweden. This latter type evinces elaborate motifs apparently influenced by contemporary Russian decorative forms, possibly a result of close trading links between the Sámi, Karelians and Russians, among others.38 Beadwork, too, was another ancient craft among the Sámi, particularly among the Skolts,39 and in a similar fashion examples of this craft clearly evince the influence of south-eastern styles of ornamentation, especially those of the Russians, Karelians and Komi, with whom they lived in ever closer proximity.40

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