Community building in an excavation of two famous 20th-century Finnhorses: Combining archaeological and linguistic insights

Combining archaeology and linguistics, this interdisciplinary paper deals with community building in an archaeological excavation of the burial of two famous Finnish trotters, Valokas and Rymy-Murto. Community is a central concept both in community archaeology and in sociolinguistically oriented discourse analysis. This article shows how different communities were involved in an archaeological project.

The excavation was conducted together with a special network of people, organized around companionship with horses and interest in horse genealogies. The excavation was conducted following principles of community archaeology. Real-life excavation was documented online on Facebook step by step. This so-called virtual excavation enabled synchronous participation for both the on-site public and the virtual public. In this paper, we will describe the opening of a horse-genetic project for a wider audience, and show how the communities are linguistically constructed in interaction with each other.