Aardvarchaeology
Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society, atheist, lefty liberal, board gamer, bookworm, and father of two.
aardvarchaeology | January 15, 2007
The Swedish Skeptic Society's annual awards for 2006 were announced yesterday. (See also the 2005 awards.)
Professor of international healthcare Hans Rosling receives the Enlightener of the Year award,
"... for his enlightening efforts to spread a fact-based picture of the state and development of the world, particularly as regards the link between popular health and global economy. Hans Rosling is co-founder of the non-profit foundation Gapminder, that has produced software to visualise and compare statistics from various countries, making it comprehensible and available to anyone."…
aardvarchaeology | January 14, 2007Behold R. Hampton's excellent masthead banner! Book token goodness and a massive charisma bonus are coming hes way.
The blog-reading public has reacted very favourably to my move to Scienceblogs on 29 December. Statshot: my old Blogger site is still attracting 136 median unique first-time readers a day simply through Google, and the new site has seen a median of 113 uniques a day in the past two weeks. 34 of these are returning Dear Readers. Taken together, these figures show that I have never had as many daily readers before over a period of weeks as I have now. Comments have been abundant,…
aardvarchaeology | January 14, 2007Since a 1997 change in UK law, metal detectorists in that insular realm are reporting ever more finds to the authorities.David Lammy, the minister of culture, said that metal detetectorists who spend days scanning newly ploughed fields in the hope that a beep will lead them to buried treasure, are doing a huge service to Britain's cultural life.
"Metal detectorists are the unsung heroes of the UK's heritage. Thanks to the responsible approach they display in reporting finds and the systems we have set up to record them, more archaeological material is available for all to see at museums or to…
aardvarchaeology | January 13, 2007
My buddy Hans asked,Do you mean that no excavations are done on churchyards, even though they are from the Middle Ages? Why?
A Medieval Swedish churchyard abandoned more than about a century ago will be excavated with great care if threatened. For instance, this happened recently at the cathedral in Hans's home town of Linköping.
But at a churchyard that's been in constant use since the Middle Ages, as is true for most rural churchyards in Sweden, it is uncontroversial to dig new graves and destroy whatever's there. Why? Well, it's kind of like the farmer who's allowed to continue ploughing…
aardvarchaeology | January 13, 2007Chris O'Brien at Northstate Science gave a speedy reply to my questions of this morning.
It seems that any evaluation of whether the US has strong or weak site protection depends upon what standards are actually followed when a site is considered for the National Register of Historic Places. I wonder what sort of sites fall through the safety net in practice. (As for the NAGPRA protection of graves, that doesn't seem to be of much use to archaeology as it largely keeps my American colleagues from studying burial sites -- for reasons of political correctness and belated post-colonial guilt.)…
aardvarchaeology | January 12, 2007Chris O'Brien at Northstate Science has a great post comparing US and Swedish site protection rules, a response to my entry on who owns archaeological finds in Sweden. I'm definitely recruiting his entry for next week's Four Stone Hearth carnival. (To which all readers are invited to contribute.)
Here are some questions that popped up when I read Chris's entry.
What happens if a member of the public makes a clearly prehistoric find on federally owned land, without digging or damaging anything, and alerts the local authorities? For instance, a collection of lithics from the erosion slope of a…
aardvarchaeology | January 12, 2007
I wrote my PhD thesis about the largest prehistoric cemetery on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. The place is named Barshalder and straddles the boundary between Grötlingbo and Fide parishes. The first graves are from the early 1st century AD and the last from about the year 1100. Some continuity! And the site measures two kilometres from one end to the other. One of Gotland's two great barrows is near the middle of its extent, now badly damaged by potato cellars. This barrow enters written history when a famous man passes it in the summer of 1741.
The earliest written mentions I…
aardvarchaeology | January 12, 2007
Something that may be the earliest known settlement site in the Americas has been found -- in Minnesota of all places. It's just a knapped-stone assemblage, no organics, so there can be no radiocarbon dates until they dig some more and get lucky. The find's position in the geological stratigraphy suggests a late glacial date, 14,000 to 15,000 years ago.
Thanks to Aardvarchaeology regular Mustafa Mond for the heads-up! Link.
[More blog entries about archaeology, Minnesota; arkeologi, USA.]
aardvarchaeology | January 11, 2007Spaced-out humorous occultist, conspiracy novelist and psychonaut Robert Anton Wilson has passed away.
aardvarchaeology | January 11, 2007Any artists out there? This blog needs a nice masthead banner at the top. I'd like it to feature the following:The word AardvarchaeologyAt least one recognisable aardvarkRecognisable archaeology stuff, e.g. a square pit, a spoil dump, a sieve, a trowel, a bucket, a folding rule, a metal detector, a surveying instrument on a tripod...The dimensions of the graphic should be 756 x 93 pixels.
All submissions will be showcased here, and if I get one I decide to use, then its creator will receive a $20 book token and +3 charisma.
Now go play with yer crayons!
5 January. Here's a good one from…
aardvarchaeology | January 11, 2007The Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is coming up here at Aardvarchaeology on Wednesday 17 January. 4SH is about anthropology in the widest American sense: the study of humankind, throughout all times and places. Four lines of research are emphasised (the stones of the hearth):Socio-cultural anthropologyBio-physical anthropologyArchaeologyLinguistic anthropologySo, if your blogging touches upon any of these themes, send me a link to a good recent entry and a brief description ASAP! Any language I can half-understand will do. (Wouldn't want to link unwittingly to any Saami pornography. I hear…
aardvarchaeology | January 11, 2007
Ship burials are rare and signal royal status: Sutton Hoo, Oseberg, Gokstad, Borre, Tune. Burials in smaller boats, large enough for only three or four pairs of oars and useless on the high sea, are far more common (though never a majority rite). The most famous and richly equipped boat inhumations are 7th and 8th century burials in Uppland, Sweden at sites like Vendel and Valsgärde. But most boat inhumations are in fact Norwegian 9th and 10th century burials of middling to fair wealth. Two have recently been excavated in Rogaland county at on-going excavations at Frøyland farmstead.
The…
aardvarchaeology | January 10, 2007
Check out Lars Lundqvist's web site about the Slöinge excavations in Halland, Sweden! It's been on-line for ages and I only found it just now. All in English.
The above picture shows a tiny gold foil figure of an embracing couple -- possibly the divine ancestors touted by Vendel Period aristocrats. You find them in the post holes of the period's mead halls. If you wet-sieve, that is.
aardvarchaeology | January 10, 2007For the last couple of years, a new kind of beggar has operated in the Stockholm subway. These people walk through the carriage handing out little photocopied notes, and then they move back, collecting the notes and whatever spare change people are willing to give. The notes say things like "I am an unemployed Bulgarian violinist rendered incapable of playing by carpal tunnel syndrome. I have three children to feed. Please help." Harmless enough, I guess, but a bit of a nuisance in a culture unused to beggary.
A friend of mine got really tired of the note beggars on his daily commute. He made…
aardvarchaeology | January 9, 2007
I just came across a pretty far-out book. On 1 December, Isto Huvila passed his viva for the PhD degree in information science in Turku/Åbo, Finland. His thesis is entitled The Ecology of Information Work (available on-line)."The study explores an interface between the human patterns of information use and the methods of structuring and organising information and knowledge. The issue is discussed with a reference to information work in the domain of archaeology. The study refers to the notion of virtual realities as a prospective basis for a knowledge organisation system and discusses the…
aardvarchaeology | January 9, 2007
The kids' teachers had a training day yesterday, so we picked up a visiting cousin in town and went to the science centre in Södertälje. I hesitate to tell you its name: the place's mascot is for some reason named Tom Tit, and there's no genitive apostrophe in Swedish, so our much-beloved science centre for kids is named... err... Tom Tits. Sounds like a buddy of Seymour Butts's to me, but I guess the people who named it weren't thinking in English.
A science centre is an interactive science exhibition where kids can perform prepared experiments. The little ones of course don't understand…
aardvarchaeology | January 9, 2007In the left-hand sidebar are two new buttons, one of which will, if pressed, mark Aardvarchaeology as one of your favourite blogs on Technorati. The other one will allow you to rate the blog with the Swedish service Bloggtoppen: yea verily, you can either pan it or praise it. Use them wisely, kids.
aardvarchaeology | January 8, 2007One of my blog entries from last spring has made it into a science blogging anthology (a "blook") edited by fellow Sber Coturnix! It'll soon be published as a paperback through Lulu.com. The chosen piece is about the Field-Archaeological Paradox, that is, the curious fact that it is far easier in Sweden to fund expensive excavations at poorly preserved and uninformative sites than at really cool ones.
[More blog entries about blogging, publishing, lulu; blogga, förlagsbranschen, lulu.]
aardvarchaeology | January 7, 2007
As the first reader-submitted pic, my buddy Lars Lundqvist has sent me a snap of himself taken by Klas Höglund in October 1995. Lars is happy in this picture, the reason being that he's just found the object he's holding. It's a large plough-mangled Continental gold neck ring of the first few centuries AD, and it's part of the Vittene hoard.
The first part of the hoard to surface was a filigreed gold torque of the Celt-dominated final centuries BC. The finder took it home and hung it in the broom cupboard. Years passed before he finally got round to showing it to an archaeologist, our sadly…
aardvarchaeology | January 7, 2007
The Seventh Annual Weblog Awards have opened their site for nominations."From now until 10:00 PM Eastern Standard Time (GMT-5) on Wednesday, January 10, 2005, anyone can nominate their favorite weblogs.
That Saturday, January 13, three panels of 50 voters will receive an e-mail. It will list the weblogs that have receieved the most nominations in ten categories."
So if you remember liking some blog a lot during 2006, for instance a Swedish one, then go there and nominate it. I've nominated myself to absurd lengths, as well as the Grumpy Old Bookman, Pharyngula and Overheard in New York.