Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, skeptic, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
This is really great. Everybody else has realised that Bob Lind's new "discovery" was a canard. But today, local paper Ystad Allehanda's credulous reporter nevertheless conveys the man's ideas that
- Standing stones are unlikely to mark cemeteries. (They are in fact enormously common in early-to-mid-1st Millennium AD cemeteries in Sweden.)
- Many of the stones in the new cemetery Lind has been spinning his astronomical yarns about hardly protrude above the turf. The reason, he says, is that the ground level in the meadow has somehow risen 80 cm since the stones were put in place, and nearly buried them. (This simply doesn't happen. Our geology doesn't work that way.)
Please, bona fide amateur archaeologists of Scania, you can't let Bob Lind act as an example of your community like this! He's a complete embarassment.
Thanks to Sven-Åke of Arkeologiforum for the link.
[More blog entries about archaeology, Sweden, skepticism, archaeoastronomy; arkeologi, arkeoastronomi, boblind, skepticism, skepsis, Skåne.]
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
Perhaps he read something about Callanish stone circle, where the stones were engulfed by peat over several thousand years. Of course, it should be fairly obvious if that has happened here...
Posted by: guthrie | December 14, 2007 1:07 PM
You may be right about the inspiration, though Lind doesn't appear to read much archaeology.
The cemetery he's been mucking about is only about 1800 years old.
Posted by: Martin R | December 14, 2007 1:26 PM
Just saw our hero Bobby Lind om the TV4 news. The female journalist remarked on the Bobby interpretation of all the phallic stones as being male chauvinist cult site. But Bobby L countered with wry smile that the phallic stones all dealt with female infertility. Well, that is something!
Posted by: Lars L | December 14, 2007 1:31 PM
Did the TV4 story offer any critical commentary? Any mention of the fact that the cemetery has been known to the heritage authorities at least since the 1930s? My journalist wife's comment when she heard about the TV4 story was "No! Fuck! Shit! Have they also bought into that crap?".
Posted by: Martin R | December 14, 2007 1:35 PM
(Martin; the interviewer was NOT your wife...)
Posted by: Lars L | December 14, 2007 1:42 PM
Yep, the BGL interpretation was said to be "controversial" due to the fact that it has been known to be a Iron Age cemetary since the 30s. Unfortunately was the county antiquarian slightly fuzzy about the BGL ideas, maybe he was edited in a pro-BGL way. My overall impression is that you don´t have to bother much about Bobby. He is doing the job for you...
Posted by: Lars L | December 14, 2007 1:47 PM
But why do the media give a crackpot like that air time? It's a mystery.
Posted by: Martin R | December 14, 2007 1:50 PM
It is very ridiculuos all this fuzzy about Bob Lind. I must say you guys (and also those at Arkeologiforum :-D) look a little bit old fashion and rigid.
I´m glad that we get a discussion whatsoever(!) about alternative explanations of our history, from the one we had before, from the 1920th - 1930th. To be ironic, did we really have any history before "the Vikings", and "the Asagods"?
And the Museums they were only good when they showed the heroic history of the swedes. The heroic swedish male of course!!!
Posted by: Sávon | December 14, 2007 2:17 PM
TheLocal.se reported uncritically on the whole thing so I took the liberty to send them some links to your posts about him. Hope you don't mind. ;)
Posted by: Felicia Gilljam | December 14, 2007 2:51 PM
Cool, thanks!
Posted by: Martin R | December 14, 2007 2:54 PM
To attract attention, and thus viewers. The crackpots tune in because they think they'll hear favorable things, and the sane people tune in to know what they should be complaining about.
Posted by: Caledonian | December 14, 2007 3:25 PM
For every stupid idea coming from "amateurs" one could probably list ten major screw-ups from professional archaeologists. Luckily the amateurs don't do excavations on a regular basis and the damage from a newspaper article is considerably less than from an unprofessional excavation. Having said this, I really don't think that any of you "professionals" need to defend all archaeologists.
Posted by: Martin S | December 15, 2007 3:40 AM
Come to think of it, I really think Bob Lind is on to something. I actually realised that he may have struck the motherlode. Martin, this is what you have to do to hitch a ride on the archeology gravy train:
1) Find a well-off suburbia with an identity deficit, and an eagerness to attract tourists
2) Find a couple of rocks, even better if you find a "phallus"
3) Invent some patchy relationship between the rocks, the sun, the moon, the pyramids, George W. Bush's library card etc.
4) Prove that the knight Arn actually brought the Holy Grail and buried it in a secret location, and that the rocks actually hold the cipher that needs to be cracked in order find it
5) Buy a shack beside the site, and call it Hotel/Bar
6) Call the press
You might lose a couple of friends, but you will surely have thousands of nutty new ones...
Now, some people might call this lying, fraud, cheating etc. But the tourist agencies will definitely call it "new theories", "myth", "legend" and "folklore"...
Posted by: Lennart Nilsson | December 15, 2007 2:00 PM
Lennart my man, you're right! Fuck science. I'm calling Bob tomorrow to offer him a collaboration deal. I've got just the kind of academic credentials he needs to take his projects to the big time.
Posted by: Martin R | December 16, 2007 4:12 AM