Last week I rode some planes: Stockholm - Brussels - East Midlands Airport - Brussels - Stockholm - Oslo - Stockholm. Two of the engines involved were kind of fun because of their small size. The movements of EU bureaucrats has created a market for short plane hops anchored in Brussels, and so the cheapest way for the rest of us to move about by air in Western Europe is often to join the briefcase carriers and change planes in Belgium. These were the machines: Avro RJ 100 (British, production start 1992, being an upgraded version of a 1983 model) Embraer ERJ 135 (French Brazilian,…

Lately I've been thinking and giving some talks about Scandinavian pseudoarchaeological writers, that is, people who publish books on the past with unsubstantiated claims to scientific credibility. The beyond all comparison most famous of them is the Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl (1914-2002). Heyerdahl is mostly known not as an archaeologist, but as a great navigator, being the organiser of numerous projects where he would have a reconstruction built of some ancient boat and make an ocean voyage with it. Most famously, he travelled by balsa raft from Peru westwards to Tuamotu in 1947 (with my…

Two days ago I talked about four Scandy writers of pseudoarchaeological books at the Kritisk masse conference in Oslo: Bob G Lind, Lennart Möller, Erling Haagensen and Thor Heyerdahl. Despite being largely composed of Norwegians, the audience seemed unperturbed by my unflattering views of Heyerdahl's archaeological contributions. He is a national hero and the museum celebrating his achievements is (tellingly) just a stone's throw from the Viking ship museum in Oslo. Them Norwegians like their maritime identity! But I don't think the country's skeptics are being fooled, as shown i.a. by my…

Thanks to Dear Reader Kate L.

Compared to the Swedish system, academic recruitment is extremely swift in the UK. In Scandyland, it's typically 7 months from the application deadline to the rejection letter, mainly because of slow external referees. The worst I've seen was 14 months. But in the UK, it's all done in a matter of weeks. I recently had the pleasure of receiving my first invitation to an interview for a UK academic job. Though in the end I didn't actually get the job, it was overall a very friendly and pleasant experience. Before I describe my trip, I'll relate a story told to me by one of the other applicants…

One of my pet peeves in academic prose of the more pretentious kind is the double-false conditional statement. Here's one that I've made up. "If the adoption of bronze casting can be seen as a sign of increasing preoccupation with eschatology, then it follows that we must be continually vigilant against any appropriation of the era's heritage by the extreme right." What I'm doing here is first putting forward a probably false or untestable statement as a condition, and then asserting baldly that one can infer something else from it, which is in fact completely unrelated. This is quite common…

Sweden's traditionally divided into 25 landskap provinces. They live on in people's minds despite having been superseded by a new län division in 1634. The boundaries of the landskap go way back into prehistory, and so they don't respect the country's cities much, these generally being much later in origin. Stockholm is a case in point. Today's urban area is neatly bisected by the boundary between Uppland and Södermanland provinces. And therefore, myself and other Stockholmers only get half of our High Medieval itches scratched by a new archaeological guide book, Det medeltida Sörmland by…

Interested in archaeological stratigraphy? In 3D fieldwork methodology? Then come to Jönköping in southern Sweden for the VIIIth Nordic Stratigraphy Conference, 25-26 February 2011. The theme of the conference is Modern Times - New Epochs & New Roads over Familiar Ground. Main sessions will cover post-Medieval excavations, burial archaeology and landscape archaeology. I've been to two previous conferences in the series, and they were wide-ranging and stimulating. Archaeology can never be better than its data collection methodology! Here's the prospectus & call for papers. [More…

Fornvännen's spring issue (2010:1) is now on-line and available to anyone who wants to read it. Check it out! Michael Neiss analyses the intricate animal interlace on a weird new 8th century decorative mount. It looks like it might be Scandinavia's earliest book-cover fitting! Did it adorn the cover of a manuscript of the gospels or of the Elder Edda - or of something I shudder to even think about? Ylva Sjöstrand finds thought-out structure among the innumerable elks carved on rocks at Nämforsen during the Neolithic. Henrik Klackenberg and Magnus Olsson discuss a papal lead seal found…

Last night I attended Junior's school concert in the church of St. Catherine in Stockholm. Here are some of the lyrics sung by the 13-14-year-olds in front of the altar. Because the world is round it turns me on Because the wind is high it blows my mind "Because", Lennon & McCartney And Night-time sharpens, heightens each sensation Darkness stirs and wakes imagination Silently the senses abandon their defenses Slowly, gently night unfurls its splendor Grasp it, sense it, tremulous and tender Turn your face away from the garish light of day Turn your thoughts away from cold unfeeling…

My brother's black metal outfit has just released its first EP, Arcane Secrets. Check out Astrophobos for some furious yet epic tunes with lyrics inspired by H.P. Lovecraft! And tell me how you like the record! Spotify - Myspace - iTunes Question to the Dear Reader: how do you go about getting your album onto Grooveshark? [More about music, rock, metal, blackmetal; musik, rock, metal, blackmetal.]

Asked by her teacher to write five things she's good at, and to illustrate them, 7-y-o Juniorette just produced this. The speech bubble reads "Yes I win". Then "I'm good at writing running putting my hand up eating candy and not liking liquorice." Next term she's scheduled to chair the student council. I wonder if I may have been a little lax in fulfilling my patriarchal misogynist duties with this child.

I type this during the last act of TAM London, Alan Moore, who is being gnomic in a basso north English working-class accent. Interesting character, a little perversely irrational ("I worship a 2nd century snake goddess") while leaving no doubt that he's keen as a whip. The day began with a talk by Randi where I learned that he was friends with Richard Feynman! I knew that though my acquaintance with the Amazing One I'm only two steps from Alice Cooper, but Feynman as well - wow! Science writer Marcus Chown then gave us his ten most mind-boggling physics facts. Good stuff! He could have…

Unusual to use an off-line computer. The wifi in the Hilton London Metropole is ridiculously expensive, so I use the complimentary service in the lecture hall and have none in my room. I wonder if it really makes business sense to make people pay separately for the wifi instead of sharing the cost over all the guests' bills. It is after all 2010. When I look at hotel rooms on the web I don't go "oh look, free wifi included, what a selling point". I just react badly when it's not there. Still, being off-line does improve concentration no end. Anyway, I'm in London for the second Amazing…

One of the perks of keeping Aard is free magazine subscriptions. I make it worthwhile for the publishers by writing these "Recent Archaeomags" entries, which may look a little strange since it's the New Media reporting on stories in the Old Media. But I concentrate on stories that interest me, and most of the mags I get are probably not read by many Aard regulars, and so I hope you, Dear Reader, don't mind. The Danish Skalk is one of my favourite periodicals, and it's not just because its editors tell me they like what we do with Fornvännen. In the August issue (2010:4), I particularly like…

Good news for Swedish metal detectorists! And for us Iron Age scholars who want the finds, the sites and the free expert labour these amateurs are eager to provide us. And also for any small-finds nerd who would like to have a labour market (who? me?), communicating with the detectorists and classifying their finds. The European Commission has ruled that the Swedish restrictions on metal-detector use contravenes EU rules for the free mobility of goods. If Sweden doesn't take measures towards legislative reform within two months, the issue will be referred to the EU Court of Justice. As I've…

In his fine new book Vanished Ocean, geologist Dorrik Stow uses the biography of one of our planet's vanished oceans to teach the reader a wide range of veeery long-term perspectives on geological history. The ocean that geologists call the Tethys came into being when the Pangaea supercontinent coalesced in the Late Permian, 260 million years ago. Its last vestige finally disappeared when one of the Mediterranean sea's forerunners dried up 6.5 million years ago. Along the way, Stow explains plate tectonics, the birth and death of seas, deep-sea sedimentation (his research speciality) and a…

I got an ambiguous greeting from Norm Sherman when I bought his latest CD (2 for $10!). He is messing with my mind.

Recently I wrote about some policies advocated by the Swedish anti-immigration party (SD) regarding public funding of the arts. I remarked that the party's suggestions show that their members do not have much education regarding the arts or public debates in the field during the past decades. "They are after all a party for the blue-eyed, blue-collar, disappointed, rural, jobless man." One of the comments to this intrigued me. Said Robert Pearse, As opposed to the consciously multi-ethnic, university-educated, self-satisfied, city-dwelling, rich? My, I haven't seen such a display of elitism…

Sensible. Tell me "sensible" and I'll reply "shoes". Sensible shoes is what your butch 60ish aunt and her partner wear when vacationing in Paris. Although my Ireland-based colleague Stuart Rathbone and I share a great many opinions, I don't think it's a good idea to call for sensible archaeology. Empirical, yes please. Plainly phrased, indeed. Solidly argued, always. Do I scoff at pretentious academic jargon, like Stuart does? You bet your trowel I do. Should we avoid unfounded speculation, perhaps even accept the "positivist" moniker? Sure. But rather than sensible archaeology, I think we…