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 | November 30, 2013
Once when I was a kid I read in the paper that Elvis had stolen black people's music and sold it to the whites. What an incredibly racist perspective.
Archaeologists have it easy at Hallowe'en parties. No need to dress up: just be a grave robber and come as you are.
You know you're not a kid any more when your wife buys Bornholms Rugkiks crackers.
Love the scent of bog myrtle and marsh Labrador tea, pors & skvattram.
Let's all start pronouncing Asquith "ass queef".
Correspondence analysis: Freudian therapy conducted by mail.
Students demand that I teach them during the spring term as…
aardvarchaeology | November 22, 2013We interrupt this transmission for some adolescent self-examination.
My high school Swedish teacher – I've forgotten her name – played the saxophone and kept an Irish wolf hound. They're pretty wussy creatures as a rule, but my teacher's pet was extreme. She explained that though big as a calf, the dog had been brought up by a dachshund bitch, thought it was a dachshund and was afraid of anything larger than a dachshund.
I'm a bit the same. I keep getting these hints that people see me as way meaner, taller, more critical and better-looking than I see myself. To me, anybody above 170 cm looks…
aardvarchaeology | November 19, 2013I should blog about the recently announced finds of Romano-Celtic era cult images and Vendel Period gold foil figures at Västra Vång in Blekinge, but I find it kind of boring to act as an archaeological news purveyor. I'll just refer you to this paper about the first find from the site and say that Västra Vång is an instant classic in Scandy Iron Age studies. I'll be happy to answer any questions in the comments section.
It's a busy month for me, seeing as I am employed at >100% counting two universities at air commute distance and my steady Fornvännen gig. Also I'm copy-editing a lot of…
aardvarchaeology | November 11, 2013
Certain experiences during my mid-teens a quarter of a century ago left me with this strong Pavlovian reaction to a ladies' perfume called White Linen. It's not very popular any more, and not at all among young women. So imagine my moment of confusion when without warning a whiff of White Linen hits me at George Best airport, making me automatically prick up my ears -- and I find that the wearer is a stout 65ish grandmotherly lady in a floral print dress.
aardvarchaeology | November 7, 2013Bassam Al-Baghdady (@Al_Baghdady on Twitter) is a Swedish film writer. He's translated Richard Dawkins' 2006 best-seller The God Delusion into Arabic. Bassam tells me the file may be disseminated freely, so go ahead and download Dawkins' God Delusion in Arabic for free! وهم الاله بقلم ريتشارد دوكنز.
Two disclaimers, though.
1. Despite numerous contact efforts over many weeks, I haven't received any response from Richard Dawkins or his staff when I've asked for permission to put the book up for download. The reason that I am going ahead anyway is that there is no official Arabic translation of…
aardvarchaeology | November 5, 2013This is the view from the staff break room in the humanities building at the Kalmar campus of the Linnaeus University. To the lower left is the university building. I haven't been here much during the 14 months since I began my stint as some-time lecturer at Linnaeus. Most of my teaching has been at the other campus in Växjö.
A few things surprise me about this break room. For instance, I am not used to having colleagues showing up and joining me for tea and a chat. It's nice! Also I haven't seen a training tower for sea captains anywhere else – top right in the picture. And perhaps most…
aardvarchaeology | November 2, 2013
From Current Archaeology #284: "The 'Great Hall' was entirely excavated in 2012, and represents one of the largest structures of its type". Cf. "Dr. Rundkvist belongs to one of the handsomest archaeologists in his generation."
The reason that there are no Neanderthal sites in Sweden is apparently that the Romans never invaded the area.
Guy two seats from me on plane was clearly very drunk and very afraid of flying. Complained loudly and moronically to his wife for entire hour-long flight. Sounded like mentally retarded 9-y-o. A character failing of mine is that when confronted with…
aardvarchaeology | October 29, 2013Linux is a common operating system, not least in its Android version, and it is universally assumed that a PC (or whatever "IBM compatible" is called these days) will be able to run it. In fact, machines that can’t run Linux are extremely rare since aficionados keep porting the open-source operating system to even the most obscure and outdated machine families.
One of the PC makers who sell Linux compatible computers is Samsung. That is, almost all of their machines can run Linux, and when it was discovered last January that some recent laptops cannot, it was universally seen as a bug. Nobody…
aardvarchaeology | October 28, 2013In Current Archaeology #284 (November), Rob Collins has an insightful piece on an intriguing little metal-detector find documented through the Portable Antiquities Scheme. It's a cast copper-alloy erotic miniature sculptural group, apt to excite both a person's scholarly and prurient interest.
At first glance, frankly, it just looks like a threesome. Once you've untangled the participants though, you find a man and a woman back to back (as on Yvonne Gilbert's sleeve image for Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 1983 single ”Relax”), emphatically not getting it on together for anatomical reasons, and…
aardvarchaeology | October 18, 2013Fornvännen's web site has become subsumed into the general document repository of the National Heritage Board. I am not happy about this. But still, we can now offer two new issues on-line for free! So much good research here!
Autumn 2012 (no 3):
Ludvig Papmehl-Dufay on the first farmers of Öland.
Martin Hansson on a Medieval execution cemetery in Småland.
Michaela Helmbrecht on a 10th century sword chape depicting Wayland the Smith from Uppåkra in Scania.
Hanna Källström on the Medieval local cult of Saint Holmger in Uppland.
Tobias Bondesson & Lennart Bondeson on a Migration Period…
aardvarchaeology | October 7, 2013My personal genealogy has never interested me much, knowing as I do that the number of ancestors multiplies by a factor of two with each generation. Thus in AD 1800 someone born in 1975 had about 2^8=256 ancestors of child-bearing age (or slightly fewer if someone has been productive in more than one slot on the diagram). Finding out that a historical figure contributed 1/256 to my genetics and social heritage would not make them all that much more interesting to me.
I draw the line at three generations back, with people that are still remembered. In my case they illustrate an interesting and…
aardvarchaeology | October 5, 2013One of the main attractions to me of blogging is my core group of smart and funny regular commenters. The most prolific of them is Birger Johansson. As far as I can tell he's been with the blog since November 2009, almost four years. I've recently invited him to write a weekly guest entry using the many interesting science links he likes to post. And apart from his top-notch commentary, Birger is also an extremely generous man. He has the charming if sometimes a little baffling habit of culling his book shelves periodically and sending me everything he can't find room for anymore. In this…
aardvarchaeology | October 4, 2013
I put the business part of my electric shaver in methylated spirits for half an hour. Loads of organic gunk sloughed off of it. Now I know where half of my face has been all these years.
Neighbour from Afghanistan describes his interpreter gig with refugee children & teens in Sweden. They're traumatised and violent towards each other and themselves. This portly middle-aged father of five comes once a week, cooks the kids food from the old country and has long talks with them in Dari and Pashtu. Afterwards they're calmer for a few days.
I like my new life as an itinerant archaeology…
aardvarchaeology | October 4, 2013
"Early Clovis knew their land and stone” -- Of course they bloody did! Finding a site with good obsidian would have been like striking oil today. People would have kept track of the site, and traded with far-off communities.
For humans who want to make more random (or at least thoroughly scrambled) choices, try this advice: “LSD is good for you, say Norway researchers”
Alpine archaeology reveals high life through the ages
Something for the First Nations and other aboriginal Americans: “Getting here from there: Mitochondrial genome clarifies North American migration models
More baddies…
aardvarchaeology | October 3, 2013About the time of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC, Greek writers started to offer lists of Seven Wonders that the well-read traveller should see. In the 2nd century BC the Hanging Gardens of Babylon began to show up on such lists. The location of Babylon is well known: on the River Euphrates in southern Mesopotamia. But no ruins of the Hanging Gardens have been convincingly identified there. This is because the gardens were actually in another city in another country, according to Stephanie Dalley's new book, The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon. The Greeks got the city…
aardvarchaeology | September 26, 2013Here are two pages out of this week's Swedish crime chronicle, showcasing the rare beauties of the small-town criminal mind. Both remind me of the movie Fargo in different ways.
The first one is awesomely stupid. Wednesday shortly after noon a young couple were driving through the outskirts of Fagersta. Two police officers recognised them and flagged them down as the driver was known to have no licence.
The couple gets out of the car and starts arguing with the police, and then the man grabs one of the officers in a stranglehold and starts banging her head against the car. The woman hits the…
aardvarchaeology | September 24, 2013Wolf warrior David Huggins reminded me of the greatest conundrum in finer etiquette: how a gentleman should behave when approaching the lower end of a narrow staircase while in conversation with a lady.
All men know that it is courteous to hold open doors and allow others to pass before us, not only ladies but anyone really. But the staircase imposes a separate and sadly little-known rule.
You do not walk behind a lady up a staircase, because this will give the impression that you are ogling her legs/posterior.
The problem has no solution unless you are willing to ask the lady every time…
aardvarchaeology | September 23, 2013My maternal grandpa Ingemar Leander worked as a sales agent of the Swedish Match Company in Punjab in the 30s before he got married. It was the adventure of his lifetime. Here's the story of his that I remember best.
Once when he went crocodile hunting on the river the party was a little clumsy and startled their prey into the water from the sandbank the animals had been basking on. Only one crocodile stayed behind and was shot. This turned out to be because it was in poor health. When they gutted the animal they found that a bone had pierced its stomach from inside.
It was the arm bone of a…
aardvarchaeology | September 21, 2013I've suddenly and catastrophically gotten tired of most of my favourite podcasts, removing them from the subscriptions list in Podkicker on my smartphone. It's a lot like breaking up with friends of many years, except that the podcasters' feelings are unlikely to be hurt by my faithlessness. Dear Reader, you know me. Tell me what podcasts I should try!
aardvarchaeology | September 21, 2013Junior's buddy expressed an interest in psychedelic pop. Here's a selection of good albums, one for each decade. There is of course also heavier psych rock with prominent blues guitar in the tradition of Hendrix.
60s. Beatles, Revolver
70s. This decade produced a treasury of psych rock, prog rock and space rock, but I haven't got a recommendation for something both poppy and psychedelic.
80s. Stone Roses, The Stone Roses
90s. Olivia Tremor Control, Music from the Unrealised Film Script 'Dusk at Cubist Castle'
00s. Of Montreal, Aldhil's Arboretum
10s. Tame Impala, Lonerism
See also my blog…