My Autumn's And Winter's Work
Category: Archaeology
I haven't actually said much about what I've been doing in my study these past months.
Posted by Martin R at 4:56 PM • 8 Comments •
Aardvarchaeology
Martin Rundkvist's blog. Archaeology, skepticism, Sweden. And books and music and stuff.
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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.
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Blogroll
Archaeology:
Recent Archaeomags
Category: Archaeology
Lots of interesting feature stories lately.
Posted by Martin R at 4:52 AM • 5 Comments •
Rediscovering Ancient Landscape Rules
Category: Bronze Age
My current project on the siting of Bronze Age sacrificial sites aims to rediscover some of the the period's landscape rules.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 21 Comments •
Talking About Heyerdahl On Norwegian Radio
Category: Archaeology
Here I go again, bad-mouthing Thor Heyerdahl to his countrymen.
Posted by Martin R at 4:59 AM • 4 Comments •
The Heating Is Increasingly Turned Off In Swedish Churches
Category: Archaeology
The reason that the heat is getting turned off in more and more churches isn't preservation concerns. It's the shrinking congregations and the price of electricity.
Posted by Martin R at 5:18 PM • 10 Comments •
The Dancing Beasts of Hvirring
Category: Archaeology
I've never seen a piece like this before: it must be a top mount for something - box, horse yoke, staff?
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 6 Comments •
Recent Archaeomags
Category: Archaeology
Mays suggests that if the child murders were spread out over three centuries, what sets Yewden apart is mainly the tenacity of the custom.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 11 Comments •
Airport Runestone
Category: Archaeology
Placing the runestone in the airport terminal ensures its protection from the rain and freeze-thaw cycle, and also makes it maximally accessible to the public.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 7 Comments •
Kon Tiki Airport Restaurant
Category: Archaeology
Last time I passed through Oslo airport I discovered this Kon Tiki-themed restaurant with a faux Ecuadorian stele.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 7 Comments •
Kensington Runestone Faker's Signature Found
Category: Runes
One of the first things that stick out about the Kensington inscription is the unparallelled preponderance of numbers in it. The clincher is found in some simple cryptography.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 31 Comments •
Iarlabanki Had This Stone Made While He Still Lived
Category: Runes
Iarlabanki Ingefastson is probably the most copiously documented Scandinavian of the Viking Period. But his name does not occur even once on vellum.
Posted by Martin R at 3:52 AM • 6 Comments •
Fornvännen's Spring Issue On-Line
Category: Archaeology
Two bronze masks from Avaldsnes in western Norway that look Celtic and may thus either be pre-Roman or Viking in date -- and more!
Posted by Martin R at 9:26 AM • 0 Comments •
Herbert Jankuhn Reads Selections From Mao
Category: Archaeology
Herbert Jankuhn (1905-90) is a contentious figure as he was a passionate Nazi soldier and SS archaeologist up until 1945, and then became one of Germany's most influential post-war archaeologists.
Posted by Martin R at 5:05 PM • 1 Comments •
Boat Carriers
Category: Archaeology
The yachting club's boat lift reminded me of a motif in Bronze Age rock art: the boat carrier.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 8 Comments •
Halland Archaeology Journal
Category: Archaeology
Another fine read about a Swedish province with fine archaeology.
Posted by Martin R at 8:31 AM • 4 Comments •
Roman Mask Find Causes Legal Conundrum
Category: Archaeology
I hope there's a way to take the mask into public ownership without giving the man either reward or punishment.
Posted by Martin R at 7:55 AM • 8 Comments •
My Gothenburg Talk About Mead-Halls
Category: Archaeology
Here's my talk about Mead-halls book, from the Gothenburg Book Fair, 23 September.
Posted by Martin R at 1:00 AM • 4 Comments •
Swedish University Invites Imaginary Bosnian Pyramid Crank
Category: Archaeology
Cornelius Holtorf has now done something completely in line with his convictions, that is, something I consider extremely irresponsible and which causes me to palm my face and groan.
Posted by Martin R at 1:00 AM • 36 Comments •
Speaking Schedule Oct/Nov
Category: Archaeology
Wednesday 5 Oct. 17:00. About Fisksätra before the 1970s housing development. Fisksätra shopping centre, HAMN project office. Thursday 13 Oct. 10:00. About Bronze Age sacrificial sites. Uppsala, Engelska parken, Thunbergsvägen 3, Dept of Archaeology. Monday 17 Oct. 18:30. About pseudoarchaeology....
Posted by Martin R at 6:03 AM • 0 Comments •
The Winged Man of Uppåkra
Category: Archaeology
Norse mythology offers two immediate interpretations: either a god wearing Freya's magic falcon cloak, or Wayland the Smith wearing the feathered cloak he made to escape from his captivity with King Niðhad.
Posted by Martin R at 2:34 PM • 45 Comments •
Medal For Planting Spruce On Barrows
Category: Archaeology
You can't just leave a site to its own devices: pretty soon it will become so overgrown that it is unrecognisable and thus neither accessible nor likely to be understood as valuable.
Posted by Martin R at 9:56 AM • 9 Comments •
Ancient Swedish Fishers Put Human Heads On Stakes
Category: Archaeology
The skulls have been treated in a complex ceremony that involved the display of skulls on stakes and the deposition of skulls in water.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 16 Comments •
Recent Archaeomags
Category: Archaeology
Here's a quick look at the most recent windfall of popular archaeomags that has reached my big black mailbox.
Posted by Martin R at 4:32 PM • 8 Comments •
Order My Mead-Halls Book On-line
Category: Archaeology
Those who want hard copy or are unwilling to wait six months for the free PDF can now order my Mead-halls book on-line for SEK 180 / U$D 27 / €20 / £17 plus postage....
Posted by Martin R at 4:15 AM • 0 Comments •
Me and My New Book
Category: Archaeology
This book aims at beginning to remedy the regional absence of mead-halls, being an investigation of the internal political geography of Östergötland during the period AD 375-1000.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 23 Comments •
Ravlunda Cemetery Rebuttal
Category: Archaeology
The paper is a mess and shouldn't have been accepted. Tellingly, the topic is archaeology and quaternary geology, while none of the authors is an archaeologist and the journal is about geography.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 7 Comments •
Sun Horses
Category: Archaeology
Scandinavian Bronze Age art features a number of motifs having to do with the movement of the sun through the heavens during the day and the underworld during the night.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 7 Comments •
On My Mind, Sunday
Category: Archaeology
I'm a single dad now for two weeks while my wife's in China shooting interviews for a documentary series. Aard's been getting a lot of comment spam lately, and the filter isn't working properly, so I've turned on comment moderation....
Posted by Martin R at 3:54 AM • 5 Comments •
Three Days Digging in a Cave
Category: Archaeology
In the mid-20th century a fox hunter crawled into the cave and felt his way around. His questing hands encountered something on a ledge which he put in his coat pocket...
Posted by Martin R at 4:11 PM • 6 Comments •
A Lot On My Plate
Category: Archaeology
Feels like I've got a bit too much on my plate right now. Tonight's boardgame night, so I need to get everything packed up before dinner. "Pack up what?", I hear you say. Well, I'm spending the next couple of...
Posted by Martin R at 8:08 AM • 25 Comments •
Current Archaeology's August Issue
Category: Archaeology
I always enjoy reading Current Archaeology, both for the quality content and for the simple fact that it's about the UK.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 1 Comments •
And On Bagpipes, Please Welcome André Leroi-Gourhan
Category: Archaeology
Charles Higham remembers his first digs in France, at age 16, in 1956.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 2 Comments •
Student Labour Wasted at Ales Stenar
Category: Archaeology
The students have been lured onto a pointless dig devised by a crank that not one Scanian archaeologist is willing to collaborate with.
Posted by Martin R at 3:38 PM • 22 Comments •
Sacrificial Finds in the Late Bronze Age Local Landscape
Category: Archaeology
It really isn't good enough for archaeology to continue sitting around waiting for the public to locate Bronze Age sacrificial sites, then look at each one in isolation as an interesting anecdote.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 4 Comments •
Swedish Pyramidologist
Category: Archaeology
To my mind, Almkvist's pyramidological studies are a classic case of geometrical pareidolia, apophenia or patternicity.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 16 Comments •
Kalv's Runestone
Category: Archaeology
Did you know that a huge majority of the runic inscriptions date from after the Christianisation of Scandinavia?
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 10 Comments •
Boggy Test Pit
Category: Archaeology
A lake basin is usually deepest at the centre. And my pit was almost as near the centre of this basin as I could get without diving into the lake.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 14 Comments •
Where Trolls Deloused Themselves of Old
Category: Archaeology
According to Ivar Hall, 80 years old, his grandfather told him that trolls used to scrub and delouse themselves against the boulder.
Posted by Martin R at 10:20 AM • 11 Comments •
No Sign of Cleopatra
Category: Archaeology
The most energetic of the people involved in the search is one Kathleen Martinez, a non-archaeologist from the Dominican Republic, who comes across as quite obsessive.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 11 Comments •
Classification Presupposes Type Definitions
Category: Archaeology
In his 1962 dissertation, Jungneolithische Studien, Mats P. Malmer established that an object type's identity rests entirely upon a verbal definition.
Posted by Martin R at 3:34 PM • 7 Comments •
Gobi Desert Romans Are Unfounded Speculation
Category: Archaeology
Here's a Chinese village with a poorly supported and recently concocted origin myth involving Roman soldiers.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 33 Comments •
Fornvännen's Autumn and Winter Issues On-line
Category: Archaeology
Read new research for free!
Posted by Martin R at 8:56 AM • 9 Comments •
Not the Big Chinese Power Dam
Category: Archaeology
The rivers run almost dry in Qingtian prefecture, Zhejiang province, China, because of recently built power dams.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 21 Comments •
Recent Archaeomags
Category: Archaeology
One article is actually a long piece of special pleading to explain why the excavator did not find the desired remains on a site!
Posted by Martin R at 1:57 PM • 5 Comments •
The Cover of My Upcoming Book
Category: Archaeology
The title is Mead-halls of the Eastern Geats and the book will be published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 24 Comments •
Antique Collectors In China Don't Care About Provenance Either
Category: Archaeology
The Chinese have had an established tradition of their own for collecting fine art for millennia. As a rigorous discipline, archaeology is barely 200 years old.
Posted by Martin R at 12:01 PM • 12 Comments •
China's Named and Inscribed Places
Category: Archaeology
In China, nature appreciation is all about visiting named and inscribed sites whose beauty is vouchsafed by famous ancient poets.
Posted by Martin R at 11:56 AM • 11 Comments •
Tombs and Opium in Qingtian
Category: Archaeology
My mother-in-law grew up in the mountains near Fushan in the prefecture of Qingtian (pronounced CHING-tien), inland Zhejiang province. Though the prefecture's name means "Green Field", it's pretty poor and has been a major emigration area for decades. The...
Posted by Martin R at 11:47 AM • 7 Comments •
Birds of Paradise Pecking the Carolingian Lion
Category: Archaeology
Both the birds and the gripping beasts enter Scandy art in the mid-8th century from Continental Christian sources, with missionaries as intermediaries.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 12 Comments •
Freshly Found Bronze Age Rock Art
Category: Archaeology
These years will be remembered as a time when the Swedish rock art map was redrawn in a dramatic fashion.
Posted by Martin R at 8:45 AM • 6 Comments •
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