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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.
Category: Archaeology
A few months ago I finished a book manuscript on elite settlement and political geography in Östergötland, one of Sweden's core provinces, in the period AD 375-1000. In countries that have experienced an infestation of Romans, this era is known...
Posted by Martin R at 9:58 AM • 8 Comments •
Category: Tech
On Tuesday 17 November 17:30 I'm giving a talk as part of Mathias Klang's information security course at the University of Gothenburg. The theme is "Årtusendenas glömska: arkivsäkring i det riktigt långa perspektivet", which may hint to the intelligent...
Posted by Martin R at 8:00 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
So you're a metal detectorist and you find a silver figurine at storied Lejre in Denmark. It depicts a person sitting in a high seat whose posts end in two wolves' heads. And on either arm rest sits a...
Posted by Martin R at 3:34 PM • 29 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Aard enjoys complimentary subscriptions to a number of popular archaeology magazines from which I learn a lot before passing them on to the Fisksätra public library. Here are my favourite stories from three recent issues that have crossed my current-reading...
Posted by Martin R at 2:35 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
My blog readers have had news of the site as it appeared, pretty much in real time. But now it's time to put up a new signpost next to Christer's barn.
Posted by Martin R at 4:52 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
In addition to the archive reports on my two seasons of fieldwork at the Late Medieval and Early Modern harbour of Djurhamn, I have now published a paper that discusses and interprets the results.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 8 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The seventy-ninth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Anthropology.net. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology! Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to Colleen at Middle Savagery. All bloggers with an interest in the...
Posted by Martin R at 9:56 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
I am not the first Rundkvist in Swedish archaeology.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
If you look at pebbles on an undisturbed 3000-y-o cairn, you find heavy microweathering on the upper half of the stones. Their lower halves are far less weathered.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Runologist James E. Knirk has published a report on the recently found Hogganvik rune stone. His transliteration is[?]kelbaþewas:s(t)^ainaR:aaasrpkf aarpaa:inanana(l/b/w)oR eknaudigastiR ekerafaRHis translation isSkelba-þewaR's ["Shaking-servant's"] stone. (Alphabet magic: aaasrpkf aarpaa). ?Within/From within the ?wheel-nave/?cabin-corner. I NaudigastiR [="Need-guest"]. I, the Wolverine.So...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 10 Comments •
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 •
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 •
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: 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 •
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 •
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 •
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 •
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 •
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 •
Category: Archaeology
It's always bittersweet to return to sites you've dug.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
In 1995 a gold hoard was found at Vittene in Norra Björke parish, Västergötland. Its contents had been amassed over two centuries, and it was committed to the earth in the 3rd century AD.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The seventy-sixth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Afarensis. 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 are welcome...
Posted by Martin R at 3:03 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Travel
I type this in the hotel lobby while waiting for the train just across the street that will take me to Brussels. The conference closed at 13, I had sandwiches with my colleagues and then set out again for...
Posted by Martin R at 10:44 AM • 8 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Sculpture fragment from the Cathedral of St. Lambert in Liège. Today's bus excursion took us up the river Maas/Meuse into Wallonia, Belgium's Francophone part, where our first stop was Liège. The city looks pretty crummy, I'm afraid, with a...
Posted by Martin R at 1:48 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Here's a piece of fragmentology. In the 19th century a brooch (inset) was found at Vistena in Allhelgona parish, Östergötland. It's a copper-alloy piece decorated with embossed silver sheet panels in the Nydam style, approx. AD 375-450. In 2008...
Posted by Martin R at 9:05 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Blogging
The seventy-fifth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Ad hominin. 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 are...
Posted by Martin R at 8:23 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
I'm very proud to see that my brain babies are having babies of their own now. That proves to me that the work I put in back in the day was worthwhile.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The 75th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at Ad hominin on Wednesday. Submit your best recent stuff to Ciarán. Anything anthro or archaeo goes! The carnival needs hosts. The next open slot is on 7 October 23 September....
Posted by Martin R at 6:43 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
I found knapped quartz and basalt and granite (!) and a lot of small potsherds, one of which has the Pitted Ware culture's signature pits and comb-stamp decoration.
Posted by Martin R at 2:59 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
My Stone Age bros Roger Wikell and Mattias Pettersson have descended from their Mesolithic heights and are now looking at Middle Neolithic sites in locations that were quite extreme at the time -- way, way out in the Baltic.
Posted by Martin R at 3:48 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The main reason that I was asked on board was because there are weird rust flecks in the cremation layer. They look a lot like they might be really poorly preserved clench nails from a boat, like some of the ones me & Howard Williams found in the unburnt Skamby boat burial.
Posted by Martin R at 1:54 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The seventy-fourth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Natures/Cultures. 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 are welcome...
Posted by Martin R at 1:55 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Art
Near Kaufdorf, Switzerland is an auto junkyard that was in use from the 1930s to 1970. It has become overgrown with various forest flora. Recently, the government has decreed the place an environmental hazard.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 10 Comments •
Category: Blogging
The 74th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at Natures/Cultures tomorrow, Wednesday. Submit your best recent stuff to Adam. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!...
Posted by Martin R at 4:29 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Skepticism
Regardless of the venue, you do not need to throw a senior archaeologist, a senior liberal theologian and a hot-shot Bible philologist at Mats Molén to win the debate.
Posted by Martin R at 9:50 AM • 23 Comments •
Category: Skepticism
The Nazis were no strangers to occultism. But Friedrich Marby was too much even for Himmler: he invented runic aerobics.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 13 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
As an Aardvarchaeology exclusive, here's the abstract of Å.M. Larsson's as yet not even printed thesis: bleeding-edge osteo-archaeology about the Middle Neolithic B in the Lake Mälaren area, c. 2800-2400 cal BC.
Posted by Martin R at 9:37 AM • 9 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The seventy-third Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Greg Laden's blog. 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 12:31 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The Institute for Archaeologists announces that one in six jobs in UK contract archaeology have been lost since the start of the recession, with more losses likely in the near future.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 12 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
For almost 150 years, we have tried to make sense of Iron Age armies from their gear. Never have we really dreamed of finding the dead guys themselves!
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 13 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
It's a copper mine that was worked from 1723 until shortly after 1945. This is one of the coldest parts of Norway, which means that the wooden structures don't decay much through microbial action -- they mainly just erode.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
We're seeing two periods of Scandy history being celebrated here. Tina & hubby represent the Viking Period in the 9th & 10th centuries. The other people, the ones erecting a may pole, are into the rural culture of the 19th century,
Posted by Martin R at 1:38 PM • 11 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Time and time again, the town on the island and the heavily fortified castle at its northern end were in the hands of opposing political factions. Little wars were repeatedly fought between Stockholm town and castle!
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Burning is a common and often intentional end for archaeological replicas of buildings. We find a lot of burnt-down houses, so one way to learn more about how to interpret such sites is to build a replica and burn it to the ground.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The seventy-second Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at A Hot Cup of Joe. 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...
Posted by Martin R at 6:11 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
My recent talk in Trävattna parish hall, Västergötland, was covered by two regional papers. Rune Torstenson has kindly scanned the items for me. The headlines read "Power once originated in the mead-hall" and "Searching for ancient power-wielders". To read...
Posted by Martin R at 7:54 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The 72nd Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at A Hot Cup of Joe on Wednesday. Submit your best recent stuff to Carl before Tuesday evening. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!...
Posted by Martin R at 12:35 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
They've been richly rewarded with the most essentially Neolithic kind of find possible: litre after litre after litre of carbonised grain.
Posted by Martin R at 9:10 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Silted-up lakes whose anaerobic peat deposits are full of vandalised military equipment taken from unfortunate invading armies of the Iron Age...
Posted by Martin R at 3:23 PM • 2 Comments •
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