Here’s an interesting legal conundrum. The pseudo-archaeological power duo Bob Lind and Nils-Axel Mörner have been excavating without a permit again (as confirmed to me by the County Archaeologist). But the site they have chosen is a disused quarry of indeterminate age. Though protected by the letter of the current law, such a humble and…

Tomas Romson asked me a good question. Why do archaeological layers form in such a way that older things end up buried below newer ones? The answer is, because people and natural processes deposit dirt on the ground. Using a word borrowed from geology, we call the study of such layers stratigraphy. Imagine a Neolithic…

Yesterday Jrette, her buddy and I went down to Ströja in Kvillinge outside Norrköping and had a look at the mead-hall excavation I’ve blogged about. Arkeologikonsult’s Björn Hjulström very kindly showed us around. The site will become an Östergötland classic, not only for the 6th century manor hall but also because of its long habitation…

I have four pleasant things on my desk at the moment: Finally my first uni job! Humble but very important to me. I’ve been asked to teach Swedish landscape archaeology to exchange students in English for about 100 hours during the autumn term. Start 4 Sept. A commission for an encyclopedia article on Viking gaming.…

My book Mead-halls of the Eastern Geats appeared last September. On p. 9 I wrote: Splendid single finds, though never surveyed comprehensively, offer a rough idea of where elite settlements might be sought. But little is known about individual elite settlements in 1st millennium Östergötland. Not one of the Beowulfian mead-halls of this book’s title,…

Major excavations are taking place in Old Uppsala because of railway work. Old Uppsala was a political, religious and mercantile centre from about AD 600 to 1274. In fact it may be termed the central place of the Swedes – tribe and kingdom – during those centuries. My friend, author Kristina Ekero Eriksson, is the…

Following up on Saturday’s entry on the bleak prospects for many UK archaeology departments, I’d like to share a remark made by a senior colleague a few years back. All archaeological research covers a certain area of the world. What parts get covered is largely decided by 19-year-old non-archaeologists. The mechanism is simple. For reasons…

As noted here three years ago, UK contract archaeology is in a deep slump where hundreds of archaeologists have been laid off and a number of excavation units have closed shop. Those experienced and well-connected field archaeologists who got the sack didn’t evaporate: many of them are still out there waiting for the job market…