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 19, 2012
25-26 February. Blankaholm, Swedish East Coast archaeology conference, speaking about picture stones
7-9 March. Danish Viborg, Bronze Age burial conference
15-17 March. Paris, European Archaeological Council, Annual Meeting
21 March. Stockholm, Senioruniversitetet / ABF, speaking about pseudoarchaeology
24 March. Eskilstuna skeptics group, speaking about pseudoarchaeology
16 April. Västerås / Westeros, Senioruniversitetet, speaking about regional archaeology
28 April. Gothenburg, Swedish Skeptics' annual meeting, emcee
5 May. Olofström, speaking about Harry Martinson
18-20 May. Berlin,…
aardvarchaeology | January 17, 2012It's time we had a de-lurk around this here blog! The last one was a year ago. If you keep returning to this blog but rarely or never comment, you are a lurker, Dear Reader, and a most welcome one too.
Please comment on this entry and tell us something about yourself - like where you are, what your biggest passion is, what you'd like to see more of on the blog. And if you are a long-time lurker who has de-lurked before, re-de-lurks are much encouraged!
(Note that due to spam bots and a faulty filter, I have to moderate comments by hand, and so it may take a while for your comment to become…
aardvarchaeology | January 14, 2012When I was 16 in 1988 I spent a couple of days in Paris with a language school. I brought the address for a game store, one that advertised in White Dwarf magazine. It was on Rue Poirier de Narcay, which turned out not to be a central location, and so I never went there. But I've wondered off and on through the years about this funny street name, "The street of the pear tree of Narcay".
And now, of course, the net can cure any idle wonderings in an instant. Turns out, the street is named for a medical doctor, Robert Poirier de Narcay, whose dissertation De l'ascite congénitale was published…
aardvarchaeology | January 7, 2012I'm on the latest instalment of the Skeptic's Guide podcast talking about the Mora/Orsa electrophobia case and the Obscurantist of the Year anti-award. I also mention a bunch of upcoming European skeptics' conventions, though Steve Novella cut out the bit where I recommended that the skeptical rogues grow mullet hair styles and mustaches for the Berlin meeting in May to honour the German porn industry.
(My previous interview with the SGU, about the Swedish Skeptics and weird archaeology, was almost four years ago! Time flies.)
aardvarchaeology | January 6, 2012Saltpetre, potassium nitrate, is added to food to give meat products a nicer colour. One winter in the 70s when we were living in Connecticut, my dad went to a New York drug store to buy saltpetre for our traditional Christmas ham. And the elderly druggist winked at him and said this odd thing.
"Hehe, it's an old army trick!"
As my dad told us later that night, he had to ask what on Earth the guy meant. And then he learned that the druggist thought he was going to take the saltpetre as an anaphrodisiac, to decrease his sex drive. Supposedly the US armed forces did this as a matter of course…
aardvarchaeology | January 5, 2012When I was a kid I enjoyed playing the 1984 computer war game Sun Tzu's Ancient Art of War. Last spring I visited Tiger Hill in Suzhou where there is a small temple to the great strategist's memory.
The game is good fun, not least thanks to the scenario editor that was years before its time and allowed an unusual level of creativity. However, my friend David and I eventually discovered an "exploit" that pretty much ruined the game for us. Here's what we did.
The game keeps track of each troop unit's fatigue level. Fresh troops fight way better than tired ones. What we found out was a way to…
aardvarchaeology | January 4, 2012Went to bed with a headache, woke up intermittently during the night to find it still there, and got up in the morning with the same headache or one very similar to it. So I took an aspirin, which stuck in my throat, as pills usually do. I figured it would slide down along with my breakfast. The headache receded after a cup of caffeine solution and I forgot about my pill.
After more than five hours, during which I had no trouble eating or breathing, I coughed the pill up, unchanged. Where was it in the interim!? Can most people swallow pills without nibbling them to gravel, as I usually have…
aardvarchaeology | January 1, 2012The Swedish Skeptics, of whom I am the chairman, have just announced their annual awards for 2011 [a - b].
The Swedish public TV show Hjärnkontoret receives the Enlightener of the Year award,
"...for their excellent science coverage directed towards children. Hjärnkontoret has aired for 16 years and thus contributed to the upbringing of the entire current generation of students and young scientists at Swedish universities. Thanks to its welcoming format and accessible time slot on public television, Hjärnkontoret reaches out to children of all backgrounds, thus widening and democratising…
aardvarchaeology | December 31, 2011When a buddy of mine learned that I keep stats on the boardgames I play, she said, "If I didn't know you, Martin, I'd say you probably suffered from Asperger's syndrome." But hey, Boardgamegeek.com has a nifty book-keeping function, and I enjoy keeping notes! Here are the ten games I've played the most during 2011, all highly recommended.
For Sale
Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation
Bohnanza
Small World
7 Wonders
Lost Cities
Pandemic
Magic: the Gathering
Innovation
Death Angel
These are mostly shorter games as such have a greater likelihood of getting played several times in one evening.…
aardvarchaeology | December 30, 2011Here are my best reads in English during 2011. I only read 38 books this year (blame the Internet), which is why the really good ones are fewer than usual.
Bonk. The curious coupling of sex and science. Mary Roach 2008. A charming look at the history of sex research.
The Culture of Fear. Why Americans are afraid of the wrong things. Barry Glassner 1999. If you don't already hate the US media, this book will kindle the flame.
Joy in the Morning. P.G. Wodehouse 1946. Extremely witty and extremely unrealistic.
History and the Gods. An essay on the idea of historical events as divine…
aardvarchaeology | December 29, 2011I began blogging at Blogspot a bit more than six years ago. And five years ago to the day, Aard went live here on Sb! Blogging and the interaction with you, Dear Reader, are a continuing source of daily enjoyment to me.
But looking at the surroundings, things sure have changed at Sb in five years, though you can't tell from the site design. Aard is one of the longest-running blogs still active here. These days I feel more like I'm at Blogspot again: works well, no frills, no fraternisation with the neighbours.
Sb is no longer a hip well-funded site that attracts big bloggers. We haven't had a…
aardvarchaeology | December 27, 2011
I'm spending this week in a semi-vegetative state: sleeping late, taking walks at noon with my wife & kids, eating chocolate, drinking tea, and reading. Here's my late-2011 selection of reading matter.
Svavelvinter. Erik Granström 2004. Swedish fantasy.
Proggiga barnböcker - därför blev vi som vi blev. Kalle Lind 2010. About the pinko hippie children's books of the 1970s.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Jules Verne 1870.
Night Train to Rigel. Timothy Zahn 2005. Scifi. (Thanks Birger!)
Kinarapport 2011 Yearbook. About China.
Diktaren pÃ¥ tronen. Michael Nordberg 2011. About 13th…
aardvarchaeology | December 21, 2011My current project on the siting of Bronze Age sacrificial sites aims to rediscover some of the the period's landscape rules. In other words, I'm building an heuristic model which might allow archaeologists to search actively for such sites instead of waiting for farmers and drainage workers to find them by chance. I was encouraged to read the following in David Yates' and Richard Bradley's paper "The siting of metalwork hoards in the Bronze Age of south-east England" (Antiquaries Journal 90, 2010).
"For some time it has been obvious that metal detectorists have been extraordinarily fortunate…
aardvarchaeology | December 20, 2011Place is a new Swedish boardgame, the first offering from Spelmakarna i Sverige Ltd who are based near my home. After reading about their product in the local paper, I asked them for a review copy, which they kindly delivered to my doorstep. (No, we're not acquainted.)
It's a geographical trivia game with five main parameters contributing to who wins.
1. The ability to recognise scenic places worldwide from pictures
2. The ability to place them correctly on the world map
3. The ability to answer trivia questions about the places
4. The ability to remember the answers to the questions
5. Blind…
aardvarchaeology | December 19, 2011The memory of Herman Lundborg (1868-1943) is insolubly linked to the Swedish State Institute of Eugenics that he headed, and thus lives in infamy. Eugenics was the pseudoscientific belief that human populations deteriorated over time unless care was taken to weed out weak specimens and keep them from procreating. Somehow, these allegedly weak specimens tended to have foreign looks and/or a low income and education. But the social pseudo-Darwinism of the early 20th century explained that people were poor and uneducated because they were stupid, and they were stupid because they had bad genes.…
aardvarchaeology | December 17, 2011
The Dear Reader may remember that I recently reported from the hibernation grounds of the local yachting club. Here's a photograph from the same site, taken by my dad. It demonstrates why you might want to weigh the winter cover for your boat down with water tanks like everybody except this one member has.
aardvarchaeology | December 16, 2011
Today is my sixth birthday as a blogger! Normally these days I would use Twitter and Facebook for such a brief message, but it is after all blog-related.
Here also are the latest pics of an Aard reader wearing one of the blog t-shirts (order here). Andrew Broome is a culinary engineer based in Palmerston North, New Zealand. He comments on the pic below that the spot is "probably as far away from you as it'll ever get, short of being sent into space" -- Bluff, SNZ is the southernmost town in the country. Thanks Andrew! I really want to go to NZ.
Dear Reader, keep those comments and t-shirt/…
aardvarchaeology | December 14, 2011
As an archaeologist I often need to plot coordinates on maps and plans. At every scale, really: from individual finds on the plan of an excavation trench to the distribution of something across Europe. Just dots of varying shapes and colours on various background maps. Most often, it's GPS data from field walking and metal detecting. My colleagues in contract archaeology and academe use ArcInfo for these things, but I've never had incentive or opportunity to learn to use it. Also, once you know the software, you still need a map to plot stuff on, and those are expensive. So I've been…
aardvarchaeology | December 13, 2011
This song is just irresistable. Check out The Kinnardlys' web site. Thanks to the Spiel gaming podcast for the tip-off. Always good tunes between segments there!
aardvarchaeology | December 12, 2011Been a while since I wrote one of these. Here's what I did for fun this past weekend.
Attended an afternoon scifi mini-convention at the Tech Museum, organised by my dear old Tolkien Society buddy and gaming group regular Carolina Gomez Lagerlöf. I heard good talks by journalist Jörgen Städje, scifi scholar Dr. Jerry Määttä, and gaming giants cum fantasy novelists Erik Granström and Anders Blixt. And I gave a talk of my own on the prevalence of time-travel evidence in the archaeological record.
Played Settlers of Catan and Qwirkle. I rarely get Settlers to the table because unlike me…