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 | February 14, 2011
I once wrote about a miniature køkkenmødding shell midden that accreted in our kitchen sink when we had oysters (image below). Another type of archaeological assemblage that occurs far more commonly in our house is the chicken or pork bone dump. The chicken bones usually don't look very archaeological when we throw them out since they tend to be discoloured and still partly covered in soft tissue. But as you can see above, what remains after my wife has cooked pork broth on fläskben, cheap bony butchering leftovers, could be sitting in a tagged zip baggie on any urban dig.
Our boiled pork…
aardvarchaeology | February 10, 2011Here's something Leif Häggström sent me on Facebook, originally apparently written by one Abby Smith.
Have you noticed that you are only seeing updates in your newsfeed from the same people lately? Have you also noticed that when you post things like status messages, photos and links, the same circle of people are commenting and everyone else seems to be ignoring you?
Don't worry, everyone still loves you and nobody has intentionally blocked you. The problem is that a large chunk of your friend/fan list can't see anything you post and here's why:
The "New Facebook" has a newsfeed setting…
aardvarchaeology | February 9, 2011Spent most of the day in Stockholm County Council's building in town, where our new County Archaeologist Maria Malmlöf had convened a seminar for the region's excavation units. The agenda was for everybody to present some highlights from last contract archaeology season in Stockholm County. These seminars have apparently been going on for years, but since I don't work in contract archaeology I haven't been invited before. This time a friend told me about the event, I asked the organisers if I might come, and they bid me welcome.
I really like events like these: it's so rare for me to meet my…
aardvarchaeology | February 7, 2011
Celebrated 100th birthday of my mom's aunt, a sprightly and clear-minded lady who likes conversation and hugs and has no problem recognising her niece's kids who rarely visit.
Attended concert with six kids' choirs (including Juniorette's). One of the choirs had five boys, the others <=1.
House-warming party at my buddy Moomin's new place. Very happy to see the guy get a real home where he can entertain his friends instead of the dusty broom closet he slept in for so many years.
Watched the hit musical version of Kipling's Jungle Book at the Stockholm City Theatre. Lots of references to…
aardvarchaeology | February 4, 2011Before modern hygiene and housing standards, children died in droves of infections in the West. Now few do, but instead they are increasingly bothered by allergies, which are immune-system malfunctions. The current view among researchers is that there is a connection here. Live in dirt, and you will get infections that may kill you, but you won't get allergies.
The Skeptikerpodden podcast has an interesting interview with bacteriologist Agnes Wold that touches upon about this issue. It made me wonder.
The kids who get allergies today: are they the ones who would have survived 200 years ago,…
aardvarchaeology | February 3, 2011Utskrift is a book-format archaeological research journal put out roughly biannually by Kulturmiljö Halland, the heritage management section and excavation unit of the Halland County Museum in Halmstad. The language is Swedish, with English abstracts and summaries. The first issue appeared in 1991, the eleventh in 2010, and that latter issue was generously sent to me by my buddy Leif Häggström who happens to be Utskrift's current editor.
The journal has a funny title: Utskrift means "printout", and I don't know why they chose this. Possibly as a reply, another regional journal was once…
aardvarchaeology | February 1, 2011This time of year I've repeatedly been taking part in the Global Population Speak-Out, reminding my Dear Readers that a lot of humanity's main problems could (and will) be solved by shrinking the planet's human population drastically. It's up to us: either we quit having enough children to replace the people who die, thus easing population down over centuries, or our numbers will crash catastrophically though war, famine and pandemics. In other words: let's turn down nativity or we will see mortality turned up on us, each producing similar effects.
It is in my opinion unethical for anyone to…
aardvarchaeology | January 31, 2011
Mount Everest: named after Colonel Sir George Everest (1790-1866), British Surveyor General of India.
K2: an early land-surveyor's shorthand notation, used because nobody lived near enough to the mountain for it to have a local name.
Himmelbjerget: "Mount Heaven", 147 meters above sea level. Denmark's highest point is in fact Møllehøj, "Windmill Barrow", at 171 m a.s.l.
Kebnekaise: "Kettle Peak". Sweden's highest mountain carries this name due to a misunderstanding between local Saami and surveyors, as the mountain with the concave peak is actually nearby Tolpagorni.
Mount McKinley: the…
aardvarchaeology | January 29, 2011Dismember a chicken and boil it in pan #1 until tender.
Boil it with onion + carrot + garlic clove, all split, and bay leaf + salt.
In pan #2, melt a few tablespoons of butter and whisk 0.4 dl of wheat flour into it.
Add 5 dl of the chicken broth from pan #1, strained, a little at a time, while whisking.
Add the shredded zest of a lemon and half of its juice.
Add salt and pepper to taste and a dash of turmeric for colour.
When the sauce has boiled for a while and thickened well, take it off the heat and whisk an egg yolk into it.
Meanwhile, cook rice and some vegetables.
The easiest way to…
aardvarchaeology | January 27, 2011
I'm very pleased to have made it back onto the courtesy subscription list of Current Archaeology, which is a popular zine about UK archaeology. Not only does it offer good writing and photography, but it covers an area whose archaeology is actually relevant to what I do. Not too many millennia ago you could walk a straight dry-shod line from Gothenburg to Edinburgh.
I recently received Current Archaeology #250, whose cover story is a collection of attempts to look in a positive light at the future of UK archaeology after radical public spending cuts. These were occasioned by two unfortunate…
aardvarchaeology | January 25, 2011
Upon hearing that I'm going to Minnesota, my excellent detectorist buddy Kenth Lärk sent me some scans of postcards from Duluth that his emigrant uncle sent home to Sweden in the early 1910s. I particularly like this image of the 1892 Union Depot, as the architecture is similar to that of the station houses along the Saltsjöbanan commuter railway that I've been riding for most of my life. It was built in the early 1890s, at a time when American architecture was en vogue in Sweden -- but in the US, the style is known as "French château". New Englanders will instantly feel at home in the…
aardvarchaeology | January 22, 2011
I don't know about you, Dear Reader, but I think these lilac-coloured concrete hogbacks outside of the Nacka Forum mall's rear entrance look extremely gay. As Azar Habib put it in his hit "Hatten Ãr Din", Det tycker vi blir bögigt.
aardvarchaeology | January 20, 2011
Dungeon Crawl as Subway Punk-Gang Standoff
Everybody knows what a dungeon game is. There's this underground complex of rooms and corridors, stocked with traps and secret doors, treasures and meanies to guard them. And you are a member (or all of the members) of a Tolkienesque band of vagabonds who descend into the underground, torch in one hand and sword in the other, in search of their fortune. Dungeons & Dragons, DungeonQuest, Descent...
Cave Troll is not that kind of game. Sure, the board depicts an underground complex full of treasure, and you do play a band of adventurers. But there…
aardvarchaeology | January 19, 2011It's been almost a year since the last de-lurk. Aard has hundreds of regulars, thousands if we adopt a generous definition of "regular", and most of you are lurkers -- quiet readers who don't say much. So, everybody, please comment away, as briefly or verbosely as you like, and do consider telling us a little about yourself! Also, questions and suggestions for blog entries are much appreciated.
And note that re-de-lurks are much encouraged! You see, I have no way of knowing if a lurker ditches Aard. So let me know you're still around.
aardvarchaeology | January 18, 2011
The current issue of Vanity Fair (#606, February 2011) has an interesting piece on the collaboration between Wikileaks, the Guardian and other old media. On page 110 we're told that Wikileaks is "partly hosted on a server in Sweden that is lodged in a former nuclear bunker drilled deep inside the White Mountains". This confused me for a moment, since there is no mountain range of that name in Sweden. Then I realised the journalist's error and laughed.
The server plant alluded to in the article is indeed in an area known as Vita bergen, "the white mountains". But it's not a mountain range. It…
aardvarchaeology | January 18, 2011
Fornvännen's summer issue (2010:2) is now on-line and available to anyone who wants to read it. Check it out!
Kalle Sognnes looks in commendable detail at a rock art site in wooded central Sweden and demonstrates that contrary to previously voiced opinions, it does not much resemble Norwegian rock art in its style. He suggests that hunting bands at the time kept their holy places secret from each other, thus preventing the spread of stylistic traits.
Morten Axboe & Lars Lagerqvist publish a Migration Period gold bracteate found unexpectedly in a large & venerable coin collection…
aardvarchaeology | January 17, 2011Noted skeptical author and podcaster CJ Ãkerberg takes a look at one of the most active and visible anti-vaccine cranks in Sweden, Sanna Ehdin, and at the history of vaccination. The entry was originally published in Swedish on the Tankebrott blog, and I asked CJ to translate it for Aard.
In Sweden we have been quite fortunate to not have the same, vociferous anti-vaccination movement as seen in the US and the UK. But this has changed in recent years. Perhaps it was the slightly chaotic handling of the A(H1N1) vaccination. Perhaps it is due to the fact that some well-regarded figures in…
aardvarchaeology | January 10, 2011East Asian child rearing is notorious for the heavy pressure put on children, but also famous for the great feats of technical brilliance and hard work many people who grow up under these conditions perform. Kids are sent to evening classes, weekend lessons, hardly have any free time. And then many graduate at the top of their years.
Professor Amy Chua of Yale Law School has recently published a book promoting this kind of strict and achievement-orientated parenting. I read an extract on the Wall Street Journal's web site, and I find Chua's child-rearing practices counterproductive and…