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.
Archaeology Magazine's May/June issue (63:3) has a good long feature by Jarrett A. Lobell & Samir S. Patel on North European bog bodies including some new finds: Lower Saxony in 2000, the Hebrides in 2001 (you may have heard about the weird re-interred bog bodies found under a Bronze Age house) and Ireland in 2003. One of the bogged-down Irishmen was found with a bit of metalwork, which is to my knowledge unique.
The piece that really caught my interest though was Eric A. Powell's critical appraisal of a recent speculative History Channel program on the 19th century fake rune-stone from Kensington in Minnesota. I've written here before about the stone and the poor scholarly quality of the History Channel, and Powell's piece is going into my clip collection for future reference.
On Scandy shores, Populär Arkeologi 2010:2 opens with four pages on the Stensborg Early Neolithic ceremonial site, covered here (and here) before by yours truly who even put in a tiny bit of volunteer work at the site. The writers are my buddies Lars Larsson & Sven-Gunnar Broström, and I like their piece a lot.
Another one of my buddies, Ludvig Papmehl-Dufay (his name may call to mind an effete aristocrat from Alsace-Lorraine, but in fact the good doctor looks like an Irish biker and is a committed digger) reports on an Early Neolithic calf sacrifice on Öland. Anyone who follows the Kalmar archaeology group blog to which Ludvig contributes of course read this interesting piece already in February.
There's something about my archaeo buddies that makes them blog and write for the general public. Claes Pettersson has a good piece about 17th century forged coins in Jönköping, but Aard readers saw that particular find already last June.
Makes me wonder if Aard, with its 1000 daily readers and its lead time of a few days, isn't a pretty good venue to publish these things in if you know you're not going to get paid anyway. Maybe I should start accepting guest entries in Swedish, put them below the fold and write short intros in English. Anybody out there want to try it out?
[More blog entries about archaeology, media; arkeologi, media.]
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
I suffered through the broadcast of that History Channel show that Eric A. Powell wrote about. It really needed the gang from MST3K to make it watchable.
Posted by: jrb | May 17, 2010 12:48 PM
And please do check out the latest issue of the Nordisk Numismatisk Unions Medlemsblad for a peek at a very rare gold coin, whose discovery was published on Aard as early as May 8, 2008.
Posted by: Tobias | May 17, 2010 1:13 PM
Congrats, Tobias!
Posted by: Martin R | May 17, 2010 3:48 PM
"There's something about my archaeo buddies that makes them blog and write for the general public"
:) Face it, Martin, a good portion of current swedish archaeo-bloggers most probably have been inspired by your blogging, that's why. Keep up the good work. By the way, I think guest entries sounds like a great opportunity.
Posted by: Ludvig P-D | May 18, 2010 11:44 AM