Kaivettuja

Kaivettuja is the plural partitive form of the Finnish past passive participle kaivettu, meaning “dug up” or “excavated.” It is used as an attributive adjective to describe nouns that have been removed from the ground or subjected to excavation. The form commonly appears in contexts such as archaeology, paleontology, and construction reports, where finds or features have been accessible through digging or digging out.

Morphology and usage

Kaivettu is formed from the verb kaivaa (to dig) with the past passive participle suffix -ttu. The resulting participle can modify nouns, and in plural it takes the form kaivettuja when used with a plural noun in the partitive or other non-nominative cases. Example constructions include kaivettuja esineitä (excavated/dug-up objects) and kaivettuja kuoppia (dug-up holes). In Finnish reporting, kaivettuja frequently appears in descriptions of finds, sites, and stratigraphic units that have been uncovered by digging.

Contexts

The term is most common in archaeology and related disciplines, where reports describe artifacts, features, or sediments that have been excavated. It can also appear in media coverage of construction projects, salvage archaeology, or palaeontological digs to indicate that material has been retrieved through the excavation process. While kaivettuja is primarily a descriptive, non-evaluative modifier, its use signals that the object or feature is not in its original ground context.

Examples

- Arkeologinen tutkimus paljasti kaivettuja esineitä käytetystä kerroksesta. (An archaeological study uncovered excavated artifacts from the used layer.)

- Löydöt koostuivat kaivetuista esineistä ja muista kaivannon jäännöksistä.

See also

kaivaa, kaivettu (participle), arkeologia, löytö, jäännös.