Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, skeptic, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
Had a beautiful day in the field with Per Vikstrand today. He has a new metal detector, a C-scope 1220R, and it seemed to work very well. Not that the stuff we found was terribly interesting: four man-hours in the Field of St. Olaf garnered us only a flint chip and a piece of slag apart from the perennial clay pipe stems and aluminium bottle tops.
4½ man-hours on a promising site near Sala got us only the above piece of an openwork strap mount. It does look like 3rd/4th/5th century to me, though. (As reconstructed, it would have measured 42 by 35 mm.) Our Sala site has great place names: the field Per has targeted is named Hall of Odin on the earliest map and nearby is the little Ridge of the Farmstead that has had no farmstead on or near it as far back as the records go.
The St. Olaf site was perfect for metal detecting today, recently harrowed and almost completely without vegetation. At Sala, however, we had to whack through dense fodder-plants that kept our antenna coils off the ground surface and made it hard to dig. I have a feeling we would have had more to show for our efforts if the surface had been as good as St. Olaf's.
I accidentally hit a male pheasant with my car this morning, killing it instantly. Made me sad, though it was a swift and painless death for a very stupid bird. I didn't think to take it home to eat before I had already driven several kilometers, so I guess the crows will have it.
[More blog entries about archaeology, metaldetecting, Sweden; arkeologi, metallsökare, Uppland.]
Humanities & Social Science
