Amorphous hydrogenated silicon carbide (a-SiC:H) films are produced by remote microwave hydrogen plasma (RHP)CVD using triethylsilane (TrES) as the single-source precursor. The reactivity of particular bonds of the precursor in the activation step is examined using tetraethylsilane as a model compound for the RHP-CVD experiments. The susceptibility of a TrES precursor towards film formation is characterized by determining the yield of RHP-CVD and comparing it with that of the trimethylsilane precursor. The effect of substrate temperature (T s ) on the rate of the RHP-CVD process, chemical composition, and chemical structure of the resulting a-SiC:H films is reported. The substrate temperature dependence of the film growth rate implies that film growth is independent of the temperature and RHP-CVD is a mass transport-limited process. The examination of the a-SiC:H films, performed by means of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), elastic recoil detection analysis (ERDA), and Fourier transform infrared absorption spectroscopy (FTIR), reveals that the increase in the substrate temperature from 30 -C to 400 -C causes the elimination of organic moieties from the film and the formation of a Si-carbidic network structure. On the basis of the results of the structural study, the chemistry involved in film formation is proposed.

Abstract

Stone Age people handled their dead in various ways. From the Late Mesolithic period onwards, the deceased were also buried in formal cemeteries, and according to radiocarbon dates, the cemeteries were used for long periods and occasionally reused after a hiatus of several hundred years. The tradition of continuous burials indicates that the cemeteries were not only static containers of the dead but also important places for Stone Age communities, which were often established in potent places and marked by landscape features that might have had a strong association with death. The paper explores the tradition of burials in cemeteries exemplified through Jönsas Stone Age cemetery in southern Finland. Here the natural topography, along with memories of practices conducted at the site in the past, played a significant role in the Stone Age mortuary practices, also resulting in the ritual reuse of the cemetery by the Neolithic Corded Ware Culture.

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The Corded Ware complex represents an archaeologically defined culture whose people inhabited large areas of Europe during the third millennium BC. Although Corded Ware graves are known also from Finnish territory – the northernmost area of Corded Ware expansion – these graves represent a special challenge and methodological problem for archaeological research. This is because unburnt bone material is generally not preserved in the acidic soils of Finland, and Finnish Corded Ware complex graves have typically been recognized mainly due to the occurrence of a Corded Ware assemblage (i. e. complete pottery vessels, adzes and ground-stone axes). Furthermore, since most Finnish Corded Ware grave discoveries have been made during the early and mid-20th century, they generally lack good-quality archaeological documentation. Despite these challenges, new insights into Finnish Corded Ware burials can be gained by thoroughly investigating the region’s burial customs and material culture as an entity and comparing them to the Corded Ware complex of the eastern Baltic region and beyond. Finnish Corded Ware graves not only follow the standard material culture and burial customs of the Central European Corded Ware complex but show additional evidence of wooden chambers and laid-out furs, and they may have occasionally even possessed small mounds. However, even though the material culture of the Finnish graves follows traditions present in the central European Corded Ware complex, the grave custom is far from uniform. Hence, Finnish Corded Ware graves represent a melting pot of ideas, ideologies and connections, likely reflecting differing origins of relocating people. Aside from being influenced by the Corded Ware populations of nearby regions, a close link to contemporary local hunter-gatherers seems to have been present, too.

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Although not often discussed in an archaeological context, religion plays an important role in human migrations by working as an anchor of collective identity and distinction among the migrants. By establishing permanent religious structures -such as burials -the newcomers can also use religion as a tool to indicate an enduring presence in their new homeland. Remarkably, such practices can also be seen among the groups connected with the Corded Ware complex that migrated and settled in the eastern and northern Baltic Sea region roughly 5000 years ago. According to the material remains of the mortuary practices associated with this complex, these people did not travel alone; they carried with them a novel religion. Defined in this paper as a 'steppe-originated religion', this belief system continued mortuary practices known from the Pontic Steppe, while also incorporating material and ritual elements from different regions over the course of time. Despite this syncretism, the core ideas of the religion nevertheless persisted. As these ideas seem to relate to the mixing of past and present generations, as well as the merging of homeland and new land, this religion could have provided much-needed aid and comfort for a people on the move.

The study of animal and plant fibers related to grave furnishing, garments, and grave goods in thousands-of-year-old burials provides new insights into these funerary practices. Their preservation presupposes favorable conditions, where bacterial and fungal activity is at a minimum, as in anaerobic, wet, salty, arid, or frozen environments. The extreme acidic-soil environments (i.e., podzols) of Finland pose a challenge when it comes to studying funerary deposits, as human remains are rarely found. However, its potential to preserve microparticles allows us to approach the funerary event from a totally different point of view. Here, we present the first multiproxy analyses of a Mesolithic deposit from Finland. A red-ochre burial of a child found in Majoonsuo is studied by analyzing 1) microscopic fibers, 2) fatty acids, and 3) physical-chemical (CIELab color, pH, grain size) properties of 60 soil samples and associated materials. The microscopic fibers evidenced the remains of waterfowl downy feathers, a falcon feather fragment, canid and small rodent hairs as well as bast fibers. These could have been used in furnishing the grave and as ornaments or clothes. Canid hairs could belong to a dog inhumation, or more likely to canid fur used as grave good/clothes. Samples with microparticles have more long-chain and unsaturated fatty acids, although animal species identification was not possible. Soil properties indicate that the burial was made in the local soil, adding homogeneous red ochre and removing the coarser material; no bioturbation was found. The highly acidic sandy soil, together with a slight increase in finer particles when ochre is abundant, probably resulted in micro-scale, anoxic conditions that prevented bacterial attack. This study reveals the first animal hairs and feathers from a Finnish Mesolithic funerary context, and provides clues about how their preservation was possible.