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Martin Rundkvist's blog. Archaeology, skepticism, Sweden. And books and music and stuff.
Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, skeptic, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
January 31, 2007
Category: Archaeology
The excellent Markus Andersson has made a cemetery map out of the field measurements me and Howard Williams and our collaborators took at Skamby in Kuddby parish the summer before last. This is the prettiest of Östergötland's three boat...
Posted by Martin R at 9:05 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Mike Parker Pearson and team have excavated part of a huge Neolithic settlement at Durrington Walls above the Salisbury plain, not far from Stonehenge. Finds are abundant and suggest that the place was a seasonal ceremonial feasting site. Says...
Posted by Martin R at 9:05 AM • 0 Comments •
January 30, 2007
Category: Humour
Dining with polyglot friends (he's a Sinologist who also works with Georgian and Basque and speaks a bewildering variety of Asian languages, she interprets Mongolian and speaks the most exquisite Swedish), my wife and I learned something about Mongolian...
Posted by Martin R at 9:05 AM • 0 Comments •
January 29, 2007
Category: Archaeology
Marika Mägi, my old co-student from grad school, is head of the archaeology department at Tallinn university in Estonia. She's organising a conference titled Rank, Gender and Society around the Baltic 400-1400 AD on 23-27 May in Kuressaare on...
Posted by Martin R at 11:57 AM • 2 Comments •
January 28, 2007
Category: Archaeology
On Thursday 1 February at 18:30 I'm giving a talk at the Town Museum of Norrköping. The subject is my ongoing research into the political geography of late 1st Millennium Östergötland, or simply put, My Quest for the Ancient Kings....
Posted by Martin R at 9:21 AM • 7 Comments •
January 27, 2007
Category: Music
Dear Reader, I've just passed a lovely hour skiing on the golf course, and I am very happy. It's -6 centigrade, loads of snow and Mr Sun is shining from a blue sky, accompanied by his pale-countenanced Sister Moon....
Posted by Martin R at 9:05 AM • 5 Comments •
January 26, 2007
Category: Sweden
As I've observed before, enlisting bloggers to do marketing offers some interesting possibilities and limitations. Unlike the case with mainstream media, you can choose exactly which person will receive an advance copy of your product (preferably someone who will like...
Posted by Martin R at 9:05 AM • 1 Comments •
January 25, 2007
Category: Archaeology
Most archaeologists work with rescue excavations for land development, "contract archaeology". And because of the Field-Archaeological Paradox, operative in all Western countries with strong legal protection for archaeological sites, they get to dig a lot of really nondescript things. It's...
Posted by Martin R at 9:00 AM • 6 Comments •
January 24, 2007
Category: Archaeology
One of the founding fathers of Norwegian archaeology and place-name scholarship was Oluf Rygh (1833-1899). In 1875, he became Scandinavia's first professor of archaeology. One of the most enduring parts of his legacy is his 1885 book Norske Oldsager,...
Posted by Martin R at 1:33 PM • 7 Comments •
January 23, 2007
Category: Blogging
John over at Stranger Fruit had a post recently on his most popular entries. Summing up, he found that controversial issues in science and religion drew the most attention. I've had a look at my Google Analytics as well, checking...
Posted by Martin R at 2:47 PM • 4 Comments •
January 21, 2007
Category: Psychedelic
I am an admirer of all things psychedelic in art and music. My wife recently bought a second-hand copy of Disney's animated feature film Dumbo -- dubbed in Finnish of all languages. But we're a multilingual family and the...
Posted by Martin R at 11:29 AM • 8 Comments •
January 20, 2007
Category: Books
The Anthropology Review Database currently contains 2667 reviews and citations, almost exclusively of books/films/CDs on social anthropology. A cool feature of the site is that they offer review copies to volunteer reviewers: currently there are 162 titles available. So if...
Posted by Martin R at 11:01 AM • 0 Comments •
January 19, 2007
Category: Archaeology
Scandinavian animal art starts in the late 4th century AD and goes through a long series of innovative styles until it's abandoned in the 12th century and a naive version of Continental Romanesque takes over. One of the weirdest, funniest...
Posted by Martin R at 5:11 PM • 6 Comments •
Category: Introspection
A gifted friend of mine suffers from a continuous psychological dilemma. He wants to be more productive and become somewhat famous, but he's pretty lazy and there isn't anything in particular he really wants to do. So, despite being hugely...
Posted by Martin R at 4:11 AM • 6 Comments •
January 18, 2007
Category: Humour
One of the journals I edit periodically receives letters from an old man in the country. They are written in an old-style hand with many quaint expressions of respect, and concern the price of subscription and back issues. The letters...
Posted by Martin R at 8:13 AM • 4 Comments •
January 17, 2007
Category: Books
British author and elderblogger Michael Allen, a.k.a. the Grumpy Old Bookman, has just released Lucius the Club. It's a new 48-page crime story available as a free CC-licensed PDF and a €4 chapbook from Lulu. I haven't read it yet,...
Posted by Martin R at 4:02 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Carnival
Dear Reader, welcome to the Four Stone Hearth blog carnival -- in science land! 4SH is about anthropology in the widest (American) sense: nothing human is alien to us, from Homo habilis bones via Early Medieval metalworking debris to...
Posted by Martin R at 9:00 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
A recurring theme in my blogging of the past year (e.g. here: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4) has been that a degree in Scandinavian archaeology (BA, MA or PhD) is almost entirely useless from a career perspective. The...
Posted by Martin R at 7:31 AM • 9 Comments •
January 16, 2007
Category: Books
Coturnix over at A Blog Around the Clock announces that the 2006 Science Blogging Anthology has now been published. The title is The Open Laboratory. Very apt! As mentioned here before, the volume contains a piece by yours truly. Get...
Posted by Martin R at 2:32 AM • 0 Comments •
January 15, 2007
Category: Archaeology
The British Museum has purchased a set of 7th century golden garnet-studded sword hilt mounts from a metal detectorist who found them at Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, England, in 2002. It's a funny find: the hilt has clearly been deposited in...
Posted by Martin R at 4:32 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Reader "Chez Jake" suggests that I might write a few "basics of archaeology" posts like other Sb bloggers are doing. I'd be happy to! Dear Reader, please tell me something basic you'd like me to explain about archaeology that isn't...
Posted by Martin R at 2:06 PM • 11 Comments •
Category: Skepticism
The Swedish Skeptic Society's annual awards for 2006 were announced yesterday. (See also the 2005 awards.) Professor of international healthcare Hans Rosling receives the Enlightener of the Year award,...
Posted by Martin R at 1:48 PM • 3 Comments •
Category: Blogging
Behold R. Hampton's excellent masthead banner! Book token goodness and a massive charisma bonus are coming hes way. The blog-reading public has reacted very favourably to my move to Scienceblogs on 29 December. Statshot: my old Blogger site is still...
Posted by Martin R at 4:48 AM • 6 Comments •
January 14, 2007
Category: Archaeology
Since a 1997 change in UK law, metal detectorists in that insular realm are reporting ever more finds to the authorities.David Lammy, the minister of culture, said that metal detetectorists who spend days scanning newly ploughed fields in the hope...
Posted by Martin R at 4:28 PM • 5 Comments •
January 13, 2007
Category: Archaeology
My buddy Hans asked,Do you mean that no excavations are done on churchyards, even though they are from the Middle Ages? Why?...
Posted by Martin R at 4:32 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Chris O'Brien at Northstate Science gave a speedy reply to my questions of this morning. It seems that any evaluation of whether the US has strong or weak site protection depends upon what standards are actually followed when a site...
Posted by Martin R at 2:40 PM • 10 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Chris O'Brien at Northstate Science has a great post comparing US and Swedish site protection rules, a response to my entry on who owns archaeological finds in Sweden. I'm definitely recruiting his entry for next week's Four Stone Hearth carnival....
Posted by Martin R at 4:13 AM • 2 Comments •
January 12, 2007
Category: Archaeology
I wrote my PhD thesis about the largest prehistoric cemetery on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. The place is named Barshalder and straddles the boundary between Grötlingbo and Fide parishes. The first graves are from the...
Posted by Martin R at 2:20 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Something that may be the earliest known settlement site in the Americas has been found -- in Minnesota of all places. It's just a knapped-stone assemblage, no organics, so there can be no radiocarbon dates until they dig some...
Posted by Martin R at 1:20 PM • 15 Comments •
January 11, 2007
Category: Books
Spaced-out humorous occultist, conspiracy novelist and psychonaut Robert Anton Wilson has passed away....
Posted by Martin R at 5:11 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Blogging
Any artists out there? This blog needs a nice masthead banner at the top. I'd like it to feature the following:The word AardvarchaeologyAt least one recognisable aardvarkRecognisable archaeology stuff, e.g. a square pit, a spoil dump, a sieve, a trowel,...
Posted by Martin R at 4:28 PM • 10 Comments •
Category: Blogging
The Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is coming up here at Aardvarchaeology on Wednesday 17 January. 4SH is about anthropology in the widest American sense: the study of humankind, throughout all times and places. Four lines of research are emphasised...
Posted by Martin R at 3:45 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Ship burials are rare and signal royal status: Sutton Hoo, Oseberg, Gokstad, Borre, Tune. Burials in smaller boats, large enough for only three or four pairs of oars and useless on the high sea, are far more common (though...
Posted by Martin R at 2:35 PM • 2 Comments •
January 10, 2007
Category: Archaeology
Check out Lars Lundqvist's web site about the Slöinge excavations in Halland, Sweden! It's been on-line for ages and I only found it just now. All in English. The above picture shows a tiny gold foil figure of an...
Posted by Martin R at 2:17 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Humour
For the last couple of years, a new kind of beggar has operated in the Stockholm subway. These people walk through the carriage handing out little photocopied notes, and then they move back, collecting the notes and whatever spare change...
Posted by Martin R at 7:21 AM • 11 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
I just came across a pretty far-out book. On 1 December, Isto Huvila passed his viva for the PhD degree in information science in Turku/Åbo, Finland. His thesis is entitled The Ecology of Information Work (available on-line)."The study explores...
Posted by Martin R at 4:54 AM • 2 Comments •
January 9, 2007
Category: Children
The kids' teachers had a training day yesterday, so we picked up a visiting cousin in town and went to the science centre in Södertälje. I hesitate to tell you its name: the place's mascot is for some reason...
Posted by Martin R at 10:17 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Blogging
In the left-hand sidebar are two new buttons, one of which will, if pressed, mark Aardvarchaeology as one of your favourite blogs on Technorati. The other one will allow you to rate the blog with the Swedish service Bloggtoppen: yea...
Posted by Martin R at 9:17 AM • 2 Comments •
January 8, 2007
Category: Blogging
One of my blog entries from last spring has made it into a science blogging anthology (a "blook") edited by fellow Sber Coturnix! It'll soon be published as a paperback through Lulu.com. The chosen piece is about the Field-Archaeological Paradox,...
Posted by Martin R at 3:43 PM • 0 Comments •
January 7, 2007
Category: Archaeology
As the first reader-submitted pic, my buddy Lars Lundqvist has sent me a snap of himself taken by Klas Höglund in October 1995. Lars is happy in this picture, the reason being that he's just found the object he's...
Posted by Martin R at 4:10 PM • 10 Comments •
Category: Blogging
The Seventh Annual Weblog Awards have opened their site for nominations."From now until 10:00 PM Eastern Standard Time (GMT-5) on Wednesday, January 10, 2005, anyone can nominate their favorite weblogs. That Saturday, January 13, three panels of 50 voters...
Posted by Martin R at 2:26 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Books
The premier Swedish dark fantasy quarterly, Minotauren, where yours truly has been a columnist for the past year, is going into an extended hiatus. A fat triple issue to cover 2006 will be distributed in the near future, and...
Posted by Martin R at 12:24 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Linnea, one of the Salto sobrius regulars, asked two questions today on the Swedish archaeology mailing list that would be in my archaeology FAQ if I had one.Who owns an archaeological find made by a member of the public?Is...
Posted by Martin R at 9:20 AM • 7 Comments •
January 6, 2007
Category: Food
My wife just hit me with some pretty heavy surrealism, suddenly handing me a foot-long yellow can of spicy Turkish chicken sausage. Her mother is visiting with us. The other day, this lady had an appointment with her acupuncturist...
Posted by Martin R at 2:19 PM • 13 Comments •
Category: Books
"With a bit of luck, random sequences of letters and figures may form intelligible words and phrases. The most well-known formulation of this fact is the image of the monkeys and typewriters: if you let monkeys hammer for ever...
Posted by Martin R at 8:08 AM • 12 Comments •
January 5, 2007
Category: Archaeology
The winter issue of Fornvännen (2006:5) came from the printers yesterday. Some of the boxes were all wet after some talented individual had put them in a puddle, but most were fine. Here's the contents....
Posted by Martin R at 2:23 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Blogging
Dear Reader, the new blog has received its first Google hit, less than a week after coming on-line. And what did this web surfer search for? Bikinis? Big Danish bog booty? No: "Aardvarchaeology". It's already a household name....
Posted by Martin R at 3:26 AM • 2 Comments •
January 4, 2007
Category: Archaeology
Grrlscientist is showing this gorgeous picture of a snake that one of her readers sent her. She's actually running sort of a photo publishing service, giving her readers' photography a bit of exposure. I've got to try this myself. Dear...
Posted by Martin R at 5:05 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Books
I usually divide my evenings between the computer and a book, interspersed with the occasional fondle-raid on my wife. Here are a few recommended reads from the past year....
Posted by Martin R at 4:24 PM • 2 Comments •
January 3, 2007
Category: Archaeology
A rescue excavation at Torreby on the smallish Danish island of Lolland has turned up two wealthy inhumations of the 1st century AD. One is an adult female with silver and gold objects including a finger ring, two S-shaped...
Posted by Martin R at 5:13 PM • 0 Comments •
