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 | June 14, 2010Popped down to Lund over the day to teach a class on new media reach-out in archaeology. I showed the students a presentation and spoke for about 2 x 45 minutes. Spending only four hours in town, I had little time to do anything else, though I passed the venue of James Randi's upcoming lecture, checked out the relocated runestones outside and peered into an enticing sewer trench cut into the stratigraphy of Lundagård, Sven Forkbeard's old hangout.
Here are the main points of my talk. (And here's the whole thing in Swedish.)
Old media - New media
Gatekeeper - No gatekeeper
Pros write -…
aardvarchaeology | June 11, 2010
Back in August of 2006 I wrote about an absurd plan to relocate the Israeli embassy in Stockholm temporarily to vacant office space in the Museum of National Antiquities. This plan became reality. But the Israelis are having trouble with the building they're headed for on a more permanent basis, and so the embassy is still there, over three years down the line.
The Israelis have had one or two rockets too many fired at them from the Gaza strip, and so are doing their best to cut off supplies to the area. Pro-Palestinian groups have responded by organising aid flotillas. Recently Israeli…
aardvarchaeology | June 10, 2010From '05 to '09 my main research project concerned the Late Iron Age elite in Ãstergötland, one of historical Sweden's core provinces. It's Beowulf country, Beowulf centuries, Beowulf people: the resulting book manuscript is titled Mead-halls of the Eastern Geats. Elite Settlements and Political Geography AD 375-1000 in Ãstergötland, Sweden. The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters has now accepted the manuscript for publication in its main proceedings series whose first volume appeared in 1789, ''Handlingar, Antikvariska serien''. The list of colleagues who have published there before is awe-…
aardvarchaeology | June 9, 2010The ninety-fourth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Anthropology in Practice. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
The next vacant hosting slot is already on 23 June. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. It's a good way to gain readers. No need to be an anthro pro.
aardvarchaeology | June 9, 2010
So Ikea sells this bathrobe called "Njuta". It's a verb, meaning "experience (intense) pleasure", and it's usually reserved for pretty powerful kinds of pleasure such as good food, good music, good sex. And Junior's robe size here is Small to Medium, which goes some way towards explaining why the sticker on his new bathrobe reads:
Experience Intense Pleasure
S/M
aardvarchaeology | June 8, 2010James Randi -- magician, escapist, author and skeptic extraordinaire -- will give three lectures in Sweden next week under the auspices of the Swedish Skeptics Society. Everyone is welcome: entry fee 50 kronor. Be there before the doors open! Among my duties is the task of buying homeopathic sleeping pills on which our guest can OD.
Tue 15 June. Stockholm, Roslagstullsbacken 21, Oskar Klein Auditorium. Doors open 18:00. Talk begins 19:00.
Wed 16 June. Gothenburg, Sven Hultins gata 4, RunAn. Doors open 18:30. Talk begins 19:00.
Thu 17 June. Lund, LundagÃ¥rd, Palaestra et Odeum. Doors open 17:…
aardvarchaeology | June 7, 2010Universities in many European and Asian countries offer an upgrade to your PhD that turns the owner into a "habilitated doctor", that is, someone who is allowed to teach PhD students. In Sweden, the recipient of the upgrade is called a docent, which is funny because "docent" means "museum guide" in US English. It's not a job: more like an academic scout badge. No salary.
To get the upgrade here in Sweden, you need to a) publish about a thesis-worth of new research after your PhD dissertation, and b) prove that you can teach. The latter proof can either take the form of a teaching portfolio…
aardvarchaeology | June 6, 2010The 94th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at Anthropology in Practice on Wednesday. Submit great recent stuff to Krystal, your own or somebody else's. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!
The next open hosting slot is already on 23 June. If you're a blogger with an interest in the anthro/archaeo field, drop me a line! No need to be a pro.
aardvarchaeology | June 5, 2010I'm reading a collection of my favourite music critic's journalism, Strage Text. Fredrik Strage and I were born the same year and both grew up loving Depeche Mode and Swedish role-playing games. He has a hilarious way of taking things that sound really cool in English and expressing them in Swedish, thus humanising the stars he portrays. And his calculated mix of slang and formality resonates with my own idiom.
In a 2005 interview with Turbonegro's singer Hank von Helvete I found this gem about Tengil, the evil ruler in Astrid Lindgren's The Brothers Lionheart. Said Hank,
"To me, Tengil is…
aardvarchaeology | June 4, 2010
The Pukberget sacrifical cave, Uppland
I recently submitted my contribution to the proceedings volume from the 11th Nordic Bronze Age Symposium. Here's the manuscript and here's the abstract:
Gods of High Places and Deep Romantic Chasms
Introductory remarks to a study of the landscape situation of Bronze Age sacrificial sites in the Lake Mälaren area
This paper outlines work in progress with the Bronze Age sacrificial sites of the Lake Mälaren provinces in Sweden. The project's goals are twofold: a) to understand the landscape rules behind the siting of deposits, and thereby b) to develop…
aardvarchaeology | June 3, 2010What's the most dangerous find an archaeologist can make? Some fear anthrax spores in sealed burial caskets. Others the asbestos used to temper certain types of North Scandinavian pottery. But German construction workers are on a whole other level than us. They regularly find Allied bombs from WW2.
One weighing 500 kg was recently found six metres below ground level in Göttingen, Germany, during work on a sports arena. And when the bomb squad set to work on it two days ago, the bomb exploded, killing three and injuring six. They're civilian casualties in a war once fought by their…
aardvarchaeology | June 3, 2010
Universitetsläraren, the journal of the Swedish Association of University Teachers, has an article about blogging scientists in issue 2010:9 on the occasion of an upcoming PhD thesis in Lund about the subject. Scienceblogs.com is mentioned and Ãsa of Ting & Tankar is interviewed.
Blogging didn't steal energy from her thesis work during grad school, says Ãsa. On the contrary, "At first I didn't even expect anyone to read the blog. It was my safety valve while I finished my thesis. Writing it was like running once around the house to get some fresh air."
aardvarchaeology | June 2, 2010
In February of 2007 I wrote about a giant sinkhole that had opened in Guatemala City. "The pit was emitting foul odors, loud noises and tremors, and a rush of water could be heard from its depths." These sinkholes are the same kind of geological feature as similar to the cenotes into which the Maya sacrificed people, gold, jade and copal resin.
And now it's happened again. Last weekend a tropical storm hit Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, killing at least 115 people and causing over 100 000 to be evacuated. And in Guatemala City,
another sinkhole opened, swallowing two buildings and…
aardvarchaeology | May 31, 2010When a family migrates, the members who pick up the local lingo first and best are generally the children, and they soon become little interpreters. My wife wrote letters to the Swedish authorities for her Chinese dad from the time she was 11. And when time rolled around for the biannual talk with the teachers about each pupil's scholastic progress, she was accompanied by her sister (1½ years older). I hear that such a setup, with all that it means for power relations in the family, can be a big problem for men from more strongly patriarchal traditions.
We're planning Juniorette's seventh…
aardvarchaeology | May 28, 2010The bedrock under our neighbourhood contains small amounts of uranium. It's an unstable chemical element that is subject to radioactive decay. The amounts are small and it wouldn't be a problem but for the fact that one of the decay products is a gas at room temperature - a radioactive gas, radon. It seeps up through cracks in the rock and disperses into the atmosphere, unless it happens upon an enclosed space, such as a building, where it will accumulate. When radon decays it produces solid particles of radioactive polonium, bismuth and lead. These tend to cling to particles of dust and…
aardvarchaeology | May 27, 2010
In an an artist's CV, you'll read what museums own pieces of their work and what galleries have shown their exhibitions. A field archaeologist keeps no such list, but we sure keep track in our heads of when our finds get exhibited. Because to any scholar who wants to communicate with the public, it is a source of pride to have uncovered something that people are actually interested in. Most archaeological finds are of course unexhibitable drab fragments, but we love them anyway for their scientific potential. Still, every now and then something pops up that you know is going to be able to…
aardvarchaeology | May 26, 2010The ninety-third Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at The Prancing Papio. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to Krys at Anthropology in Practice. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. The next vacant hosting slot is already on 23 June. It's a good way to gain readers. No need to be an anthro pro.
aardvarchaeology | May 25, 2010The National Heritage Board of Sweden has released a beta version of a location-aware heritage-data browser for Android. The name is Kringla Mobil, and it talks to the central mash-up database that collates information from museums and organisations all over the country. My Visby buddies Lars and Johan are driving forces in the project.
I just stepped out into my yard, pressed Kringla Mobil's map button and searched for gravfält, "prehistoric cemetery". Immediately I got a number of markers on the map: not all the cemeteries in the vicinity, but the ones for which the database contains some…
aardvarchaeology | May 24, 2010I'm writing a paper for the conference volume of the Helsinki meeting I attended back in October. Here's an excerpt from the manuscript.
In April and May of 2010 I visited nine sacrificial sites in Uppland and Södermanland provinces, selecting them by the criteria that I had to be able to ascertain their locations closely, the finds should preferably be rather rich, and I favoured sites located within walking distance of each other. The winter had been long and cold, and so vegetation was still sparse and much plough soil remained open to field walking. This ensured the best possible…