Now on ScienceBlogs: Here we go again. Ecstasy, death...unsubstantiated claims.
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
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
I am not the first Rundkvist in Swedish archaeology.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 4 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: Politics
Last night somebody googled the phrase "martin rundqvist republikan" and ended up here on my blog. Note the K: this person probably didn't wonder if I'd vote for Sarah Palin. They wondered what I think about the Swedish constitution,...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 29 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
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: Food
My wife and I made a short mushrooming excursion to Lake Lundsjön after lunch. Little more than half an hour in the woods garnered us only four species, but huge amounts of one: velvet bolete. We went home early...
Posted by Martin R at 10:57 AM • 4 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
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: Space
Stacy L. Mason is an Aard regular and a talented artist. Check out his awesome interpretation of the Swedish tardigrades that are going to Phobos! In other news, I have issues with the lyrics of the Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas...
Posted by Martin R at 2:33 AM • 8 Comments •
Category: Space
Those microdaddies will go to Phobos and back, and then biologists will be able to compare them to their stay-at-home buddies to learn what the environment out there in interplanetary space really does to an Earth creature.
Posted by Martin R at 8:43 AM • 3 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: Art
[More blog entries about Sweden, photography, manor; Närke, Askersund, foto, herrgård.] My part-time employers, the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, sometimes receive rather hefty donations. This is how they came to own Stjernsund manor near Askersund in the province of...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 0 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: Sweden
Imagine a flat gneiss and granite plateau criss-crossed by huge faults and crevices. Now run a few glaciations across it, sanding it down real good, so that everything is rounded.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 4 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
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
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 •
Category: Archaeology
I've been busy filling in gaps and writing the last piece of text for my Östergötland book. It's been my main project for almost four years.
Posted by Martin R at 11:40 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Employees in pilot uniforms would ride around in limousines and sell copies to the landowners.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Tech
Saturday me and the kids went on an unusual package tour. First we took the 1903 steam ship Mariefred from Stockholm to Mariefred, and got to visit the engine room while the machine was working. Mariefred is a small...
Posted by Martin R at 2:51 PM • 14 Comments •
Category: Politics
Andersson has fed his editor a scary interesting story that happens not to be true. His choice of words suggests that he has pretty extreme libertarian opinions that cause him to want the Swedish system to fail.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 14 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Dating from the 11th century and consisting mainly of about 1000 German and English coins, it also has some Islamic ones, one from Sigtuna and even one from India, a very rare occurrence.
Posted by Martin R at 10:03 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: Skepticism
It may seem a little gratuitous in a country where few people are religious any more, but the ads make the point that there's a lot of quiet Christian influence still around in society.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
It appears to be a forged gold coin, consisting of a soft grey metal (tin?) with a thin coating of a yellow metal.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 14 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
I received pictures and x-rays of the purported weapons. I am quite sure that they are a) not weapons, and b) not from the Viking Period.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Skepticism
One of the evaluation's main findings is that the Church of Sweden has too much influence over the universities, and that this influence has grown in recent years.
Posted by Martin R at 3:20 PM • 9 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
A friendly Englishman asked me how a law-abiding metal detectorist should go about getting a permit to pursue their hobby in this country.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 74 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
All the warnings are due to inadequate quantity and quality of teaching staff per student.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Anglophones find it really funny that one of Sweden's oldest towns is named Sick Tuna.
Posted by Martin R at 8:28 AM • 8 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
You can book guides with which you participate in flint knapping, leather working, cooking, archery, trapping and so on.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 8 Comments •
Category: Sweden
Printed newspaper are crap. The news in them is old, you still get entire multipage sections that you don't want, they use up trees and gasoline, they crowd your mailbox and you have to dispose of them after reading them....
Posted by Martin R at 9:34 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Maja Bäckvall and Jannie Teinler are visiting rune stones and posing for photographs along with them. So far they've done 121 rune stones!
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The forenoon saw me in the stores of the Museum of National Antiquities looking through Otto Frödin's uncatalogued finds from the "Sverkersgården" site.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
"The programs appear to be put together according to whatever specialists each department has on its staff."
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
On the big rune stone, dating from about AD 1000, Torgärd's poetic commemoration of her maternal uncles can be read.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
If you do get a job against all odds, then that will be through contacts, and the job will be poorly paid and last only a few months in the summer.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 27 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
These excavations are illegal. I don't think they should be, but they are.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 16 Comments •
Category: Biology
Signs of spring so far around where I live, apart from the obvious sunshine and disappearance of the snow & ice:Crocus Snowdrop Scilla Blackbird singing at sundown (ah!) Magpies brawling...
Posted by Martin R at 9:11 AM • 15 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The integrity of the museum-supplied data still stands, but now us users can help accrete more info around each find and site.
Posted by Martin R at 9:00 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The Swedish Heritage Board has begun putting historical photographs whose copyright has expired onto Flickr Commons.
Posted by Martin R at 8:22 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Every issue of Fornvännen will henceforth appear on-line half a year after it was distributed on paper.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
I don't think curating, photographing and cataloguing things like this is a good use of public funding.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 27 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
You almost only find the feet and legs of the pots, hardly ever the wall or rim. Why is that?
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 40 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
I used to do all my plans and maps in a hard-core CAD program using a digitising tablet, but then WinXP came along.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 14 Comments •
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