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• Old hut´s ground floor
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Old hut's ground floor

Half a kilometer west of the village centre, on a ridge near Västersvägen, you can find traces from the history of Sundom. Karl-Erik Mitts found remains of a number of dwelling sites on the hill Djupkärrsbacken in 1987. Bygdeföreningen had archelogists to make researches on one of the sites in 1989. The dwellings' foundations are nearly square, measuring 5 m x 5 m. The northern wall is about 60 cm high consisting of stones. There is an opening "door" in the southeast. In the middle of the site there was a fireplace surrounded with stones. Carbon and burned fragments of bones, probably from seal bones, were found inside and near the fireplace.  

A season's dwelling site    

The carbon from the fireplace has been analysed by the radio carbon dating. The results from the analysis show that people have been living on this place more than 2,000 years ago. At the time this was a place on an island in the outer archipelago. It most probably is a season's dwelling site for seal hunters and fishermen. The question is: Who were these people? From where did they come?

With the help of our imagination we can see hunting men coming here to hunt seals in early spring. They came from the mainland about 15 km to the southeast. The hunters built the dwelling sites on a protected place. They used stones and most likely wood as the building material. Today this place is 22.5 m above the sea level. This primitive dwelling site was used only in the hunting season. We can imagine people sitting around a fire making their dinner and smoke going out of the smoke hole in the roof. It is possible that other dwelling sites were destroyed as roads was built in this area at the end of 1980's.
     

Almost no finds - yet    

A small piece of ceramics was found near the fireplace in archeologic researches in 1994. It could be a piece of a broken bowl. This find gives us a hint of the Preroman Iron Age, which goes together with the result of the C-14-dating.

Research in 1994 was concentrated in the yard outside the door in the south and southwest. Nothing was found here. This possibly means that the hunters took good care of their belongings. One of the participants in the research commented: "I guess they came from Laihia" (the people of Laihia are known as the Scots of Finland).
     

Sacrificial holes?    

About 200 meters to the west from the dwelling site there are two holes formed like bowls in a flat erratic block of sandstone. It is situated by the side of the road next to another larger erratic block. The place is called "kattfäälin" and "hundfäälin" because the holes remind one of the traces of a cat and a dog. It seams likely that the holes have been man-made, and archeologists think they are sacrificial holes. It is impossible to tell anything about their origin and connection to the dwelling sites.

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