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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.
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 •
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 •
Category: Archaeology
The torques often come in twos and threes, so I was hoping to find another one today.
Posted by Martin R at 4:16 PM • 9 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Here's what I need to bring when going into the field.
Posted by Martin R at 4:19 PM • 11 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Success and failure in archaeological fieldwork is a graded scale.
Posted by Martin R at 3:52 PM • 22 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Old Uppsala. Archaeology and early historical sources unanimously point this village out as one of the Lake Mälaren region's most important power centres.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Fieldwork
No big news on site today. I did some topless deturfing in the sun and taught a bright student to use a metal detector.
Posted by Martin R at 4:23 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
We're still on top of the barrow's capping slate-shingle cairn (put in place by the 18th century antiquarians who re-erected the Pillar of Eliseg?), and it is uncertain whether it will be removed at all this year.
Posted by Martin R at 5:22 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
I did some metal detecting, finding lead spatters that may have to do with 18th century repairs to the 9th century Pillar of Eliseg, and two 20th century coins, and of course a few aluminium ring-pulls.
Posted by Martin R at 5:41 PM • 11 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
These people really knew how to work quartz, bringing chunks of it on their sealing expeditions to the remote group of tiny islands that is now the heights of Tyresta.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
"Of course, some thought he was a little crazy, crawling around like that with a blanket over his head."
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Yesterday I did another hour with my metal detector in the disused potato patch where I found a 17th century coin in September 2008. No luck really this time: the only coin I found dates from 1973 and the...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
I've walked around, looked at sites, gotten to know the lay of the land, searched in the plough soil ("fieldwalking") and taken a lot of photographs.
Posted by Martin R at 2:57 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
I hate aluminium. I took up 111 objects and almost all of them were made of that accursed metal: mainly pull tabs, bottle tops and crumbly nasty wads of foil.
Posted by Martin R at 3:22 PM • 12 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: 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
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 • 3 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Check it out if you're into the Late Mesolithic!
Posted by Martin R at 8:22 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
I'm particularly interested in the pre-battle finds that are starting to accumulate.
Posted by Martin R at 11:37 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Finds and radiocarbon dates allow us to identify five phases on-site, two of them corresponding to the dates of the metal detector finds that occasioned the excavations.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The people on this site avoided burying stuff that keeps, not just during one era, but over repeated use phases covering thousands of years. Drat.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 8 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The results were actually a bit of a let-down after the sword I found in '07.
Posted by Martin R at 3:06 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Cartridges are large chunks of brass, which would make them obtrusive even if they were just spheres.
Posted by Martin R at 12:40 PM • 16 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The dig closes eight days earlier than planned.
Posted by Martin R at 3:23 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Like winning a year's supply of something you have absolutely no use for and cannot sell.
Posted by Martin R at 4:08 PM • 22 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
We finished machining away the ploughsoil today, and I reckon we've uncovered about 800 square meters. I have a permit for 1200 sqm, but I stopped here. The landowner doesn't want us to expand in the most interesting direction...
Posted by Martin R at 4:42 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
We may be dealing with traces of late-pre-Roman activity.
Posted by Martin R at 3:59 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Every little bit has fallen into place as planned.
Posted by Martin R at 2:54 PM • 11 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
In their day they were the largest issue yet in the history of Sweden.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 8 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Today we dug and sieved our 33rd and last square-meter test pit at Djurhamn, and I took the gear back to the County Museum's stores. Unless a colleague with better early-modern pottery skillz than mine provides any surprises, it seems...
Posted by Martin R at 12:53 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
I wish one of those pits would strike a 16th century midden!
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
One tree house had an interesting piece of furniture: a gynaecologist's examination chair!?
Posted by Martin R at 3:32 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Working in the woods was weird because of the outlandish sounds from a colony of grey herons.
Posted by Martin R at 4:00 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Larsson borrowed a horse trailer from a relative and crammed the entire Skateholm fieldwork equipment into it.
Posted by Martin R at 5:14 PM • 6 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Amazing to find all this insanely old material in a tract of completely nondescript woodland.
Posted by Martin R at 4:12 PM • 10 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Ullr is one of the old gods that were semi-forgotten in Snorri's day.
Posted by Martin R at 4:59 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Yesterday I did 5.5 more man-hours of metal detecting at the "Hall of Odin" site in Västmanland with Per Vikstrand. No prehistoric finds: just a piece of a 15/16/17th century brass cooking pot. Bob Lind's craziness is once more repeated...
Posted by Martin R at 4:12 AM • 18 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The St. Olaf site was perfect for metal detecting today, recently harrowed and almost completely without vegetation.
Posted by Martin R at 5:31 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The step from a hammer-wielding pagan god to an axe-holding Viking saint may not have been very great.
Posted by Martin R at 4:07 PM • 3 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Frag of a brooch decorated with embossed silver foil. 5th century. Photograph Tobias Bondesson. Our site in Kimstad parish looked even better than I'd thought. This was one of many cases where I've come swooping in to sites that...
Posted by Friendly Scibling at 6:05 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Frag of a lion-shaped badge with a rivet used to fix it to some surface. Photograph Tobias Bondesson. Another day of fruitful fieldwork, with friendly landowners and pretty good weather. We started out with 20 man-hours in the fields...
Posted by Friendly Scibling at 6:40 PM • 10 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Polyhedrical weight. 9/10th century. Photograph Tobias Bondesson. (Martin here, posting from the hostel of Norsholm on the Göta canal, using my handheld and the cell phone network. To get the post on-line, my dear scibling Janet has kindly agreed...
Posted by Friendly Scibling at 8:17 PM • 8 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Rune Ehrsson brought a fine piece of Late Medieval or Early Modern pottery to show us.
Posted by Martin R at 5:21 PM • 10 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
I've spent the day getting the Djurhamn sword out of the ground.
Posted by Martin R at 1:54 PM • 41 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
We seem to be dealing with a magnate's farm established about AD 500.
Posted by Martin R at 5:05 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The lower sensors pick up the planet's magnetic field plus any subsoil anomalies, while the upper sensors only get the planet's field.
Posted by Martin R at 4:16 PM • 10 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Djurhamn was its era's equivalent of a major airport.
Posted by Martin R at 4:52 PM • 12 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Ancient lithics scatters were everywhere, peeping out of the scorched earth.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 11 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The others said I sounded like an irate wasp.
Posted by Martin R at 10:05 AM • 8 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Different armies use different equipment, and in this case this shows even in the musket balls.
Posted by Martin R at 2:54 PM • 4 Comments •
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