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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, chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
October 31, 2009
Category: Archaeology
We saw a preserved little bit of an excavated cemetery to which had been added a memorial stone in the 1930s. On the plaque the site is dated to about AD 100 and proclaimed as burial place of the first Finns!
Posted by Martin R at 11:26 AM • 4 Comments •
October 30, 2009
Category: Archaeology
Lise Harvig knows where every piece of bone and bronze is in the burial urns before she even cuts open the plaster they've been encased in since being lifted out of the ground.
Posted by Martin R at 12:03 PM • 8 Comments •
October 29, 2009
Category: Archaeology
I'm at the 11th Nordic Bronze Age symposium, which for the first time includes a bunch of Baltic colleagues as wall. Everybody's very friendly and the atmosphere is informal.
Posted by Martin R at 4:31 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: Health
Ed Yong's excellent post about fruit-bat fellatio received some even better, eye-opening comments from one Russell and Frog:Russell: "Tan is falling into the fallacy that animals have sex for the purpose of procreation. Or of writing as if. Those bats...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 5 Comments •
October 28, 2009
Category: Biology
The research reported on is in fact irrelevant to the much-publicised concerns about MRSA and other bacterial strains that have evolved resistance to antibiotics.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 2 Comments •
October 27, 2009
Category: Blogging
A very prominent German Wikipedian, Meisterkoch ("Master Chef"), doesn't like bloggers much. In a recent opinion piece he manages to insult all the world's blogging scientists in one fell swoop."At best, blogs are run by second-rate scientists; typically, however, just...
Posted by Martin R at 10:58 AM • 9 Comments •
Category: Tech
I've been on the instant messaging service ICQ daily since 1997. Last week, though, my entry in some database apparently got screwed up, so my password no longer works and I can't get the retrieval mechanism to send me a...
Posted by Martin R at 9:22 AM • 0 Comments •
October 25, 2009
Category: Photography
October drizzle can be quite photogenic in my part of the world. Here's a view from the bridge to Fisksätra holme. (I just discovered Pixlr, an excellent free on-line image editor that runs in your browser.)...
Posted by Martin R at 7:06 AM • 2 Comments •
October 23, 2009
Category: Travel
Next week, 29-31 October, I'll be in Helsinki for the Nordic Bronze Age symposium. The organisers have been kind enough to ask me to chair one of the sessions, but I'd love to meet up with some Aard readers too....
Posted by Martin R at 12:08 PM • 8 Comments •
October 22, 2009
Category: Archaeology
True to the rules of Open Access publishing, the April issue of Fornvännen has come on-line in all its full-text glory less than six months after paper publication.Katharina Hammarstrand Dehman reports on the kind of hardcore wetland archaeology you can...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 1 Comments •
October 21, 2009
Category: Music
The other day Dr. Isis made comment no 10,000 here on Aard. Lucky it wasn't one of the hate commenters that swarmed the blog around that time! Because the prize I decided on for commenter 10^4 was a song,...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The seventy-eighth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Paddy K's Swedish Extravaganza. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology! Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. All bloggers with an interest in the...
Posted by Martin R at 6:25 AM • 1 Comments •
October 19, 2009
Category: Archaeology
The Swedish Research Council just released the list of researchers who are getting funding this year. The following archaeological projects are on the list.Ingela Bergman: Trade, trade routes and Sami settlements -- socio-economic networks in northern Sweden AD 1000-1500. Gunilla...
Posted by Martin R at 1:14 PM • 9 Comments •
October 18, 2009
Category: Having Fun
Friday night, I made tacos and chocolate chip cookies with my kids. Saturday, I attended the Imagicon 2 speculative fiction conference, chairing a panel on time travel and forming part of a panel on legal aspects of interstellar empires without...
Posted by Martin R at 1:18 PM • 16 Comments •
October 16, 2009
Category: Blogging
Dr. Isis made the 10,000th comment here on Aard earlier today! Flatteringly, she said that I had made half the women on the Internet lose their shit. I simply know not my own strength. It took two years and...
Posted by Martin R at 4:46 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Politics
In the 1970s mode of thinking, feminists accept and celebrate the female body for what it is. Attempting to look like 20 when you're 35 is seen as a symptom of patriarchal repression.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 30 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The 78th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at Paddy K's Swedish Extravaganza on Wednesday. Submit great recent stuff to Paddy, your own or somebody else's. Anything anthro or archaeo goes! The carnival needs hosts. The next open slot...
Posted by Martin R at 4:18 AM • 0 Comments •
October 14, 2009
Category: Children
Autumn is starting to get nasty in Sweden, and immediately the Fake Advertising Mom pops up on billboards and in magazines. Sometimes she's even part of a Fake Advertising Family. Here's what I mean. I don't claim 100% accuracy,...
Posted by Martin R at 2:02 PM • 47 Comments •
October 13, 2009
Category: Politics
Last night somebody googled the phrase "martin rundqvist republikan" and ended up here on my blog. Note the K: this person probably didn't wonder if I'd vote for Sarah Palin. They wondered what I think about the Swedish constitution,...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 29 Comments •
October 12, 2009
Category: Homeownership
The wasp nest is ejaculating its little emissaries, and my house is one big latex contraceptive.
Posted by Martin R at 2:41 PM • 13 Comments •
October 11, 2009
Category: Books
I'll be at the ImagiCon 2 speculative fiction convention in the burbs of Stockholm on Saturday the 17th. I'm chairing a panel discussion on time travel and paradoxes at 15:00, and I'm on a panel about interstellar law at 21:00....
Posted by Martin R at 5:08 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: Children
We spent Friday afternoon and evening walking in the sunshine, eating like kings, listening to some pretty far-out and eclectic music and playing the Swedish 70s board game Marinattack.
Posted by Martin R at 10:12 AM • 5 Comments •
October 8, 2009
Category: Archaeology
The fact that the place is still an island means that it was way, way out 2600 years ago.
Posted by Martin R at 4:39 PM • 6 Comments •
October 7, 2009
Category: Blogging
The seventy-seventh Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at A Place Odyssey. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology! Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. All bloggers with an interest in the subject...
Posted by Martin R at 4:31 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Inscriptions in the early 24-character futhark are rare. And when you find them, their messages are usually not straight-forward.
Posted by Martin R at 9:56 AM • 11 Comments •
October 5, 2009
Category: Skepticism
The Amazing Meeting London 1 was a top-quality event. The only way it could have been even better is if they'd included a few more interactive bits, workshops & stuff.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 6 Comments •
October 4, 2009
Category: Skepticism
I'm at The Amazing Meeting London, an Old World instance of the skeptical conferences organised by the James Randi Educational Foundation. (Or more correctly, I am waiting for breakfast at my threadbare Bayswater hotel, where I sleep in a...
Posted by Martin R at 3:00 AM • 4 Comments •
October 2, 2009
Category: Travel
I've been called in to help my friend Arne, retired art historian, whack a manuscript into shape. So the other day I drove down to the manor on Vikbolandet and spent 24 enjoyable hours there, writing and chatting and...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 0 Comments •
October 1, 2009
Category: Archaeology
It's always bittersweet to return to sites you've dug.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 4 Comments •
