
Bird is the Word
Oula Seitsonen
PhD
Biography
I am an archaeologist and geographer working as a postdoc at the University of Oulu. Through the years I have been occupied with whatever has paid my bills, e.g. the archaeology of pastoralist societies in Mongolia, East Africa and Fennoscandia, GIS and remote sensing applications in archaeology, and the past of Lapland’s wilderness areas. I have acted, for instance, as a field archaeologist, cartographer, surveying equipments salesman, and GIS engineer, for example in northern Siberia, Alaska, and Norway. I have been working since 2006 with the Second World War archaeologies and in my PhD I marveled the landscapes and materialities of Hitler's Arctic war, for instance, how the various communities have related, signified and engaged with those. At the moment I work in the project Domestication in Action, wondering about the domestication of reindeer in Sápmi from a landscape perspective. My other ongoing research deals with pastoralism in Mongolia, the Finnish Winter War (1939-1940) heritage, developing geophysical and remote sensing methods to locate clandestine Second World War mass graves, and archaeological applications of the airborne laser scanning (LiDAR) data.
Research interests
- Archaeological GIS
- Cultural Heritage
- Conflict Archaeology
- Pastoralism
- Northern Fennoscandia
- Mongolia
- East Africa
Databases
Social media
Professional and community activities
- Finnish Association for Forensic Archaeology and Anthropology, President
- Journal of Conflict Archaeology: Member of the editorial board
- Remote Sensing: Member of the topic editorial board
Research groups
- Postdoctoral researcher, Domestication in Action-Tracing Archaeological Markers of Human-Animal Interaction
- Postdoctoral researcher, Automatic detection of archaeological sites in airborne laser scanning data
Selected publications
- Seitsonen, Oula (2021) Archaeologies of Hitler’s Arctic War : Heritage of the Second World War German Military Presence in Finnish Lapland. - Material Culture and Modern Conflict. London. [Original]
- Stephens, Lucas; Fuller, Dorian; Boivin, Nicole; Rick, Torben; Gauthier, Nicolas; Kay, Andrea; Marwick, Ben; Armstrong, Chelsey Geralda Denise; Barton, C. Michael; Denham, Tim; Douglass, Kristina; Driver, Jonathan; Janz, Lisa; Roberts, Patrick; Rogers, J. Daniel; Thakar, Heather; Altaweel, Mark; Johnson, Amber L.; Sampietro Vattuone, Maria Marta; Aldenderfer, Mark (2019) Archaeological assessment reveals Earth's early transformation through land use. - Science 365 (6456), 897-+ . [Original]
- Risbøl,Ole; Langhammer, Daniel; Schlosser Mauritsen,Esben; Seitsonen, Oula (2020) Employment, Utilization, and Development of Airborne Laser Scanning in Fenno-Scandinavian Archaeology–a Review. - Remote sensing 12 (9), 1411 . [Original] [Self-archived]
- Seitsonen Oula (2020) Ruttoa ylätunturissa? Saamelaisten poronhoitokohteiden ajoittuminen Enontekiön Yliperällä. - Skas 4, -
- Peuramaki-Brown, Meaghan M.; Morton, Shawn G.; Seitsonen, Oula; Sims, Chris; Blaine, Dave (2020) 2020 Grand Challenge No. 3: Digital Archaeology. Technology-Enabled Learning in Archaeology. - Journal of archaeology and education 4 (3), 1-36, 4 . [Original]
- Herva, Vesa-Pekka; Seitsonen, Oula (2020) The haunting and blessing of Kankiniemi : coping with the ghosts of the Second World War in northernmost Finland (Photo essay). Entangled beliefs and rituals : religion in Finland and Sápmi from Stone Age to contemporary times. Äikäs ,Tiina; Lipkin, Sanna. - Monographs of the archaeological society of finland 8. Helsinki. 225-235. [Original]