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 | May 4, 2010
The full text of Fornvännen's October issue, 2009:3, has come on-line thanks to our excellent cyber cowgirl Gun Larsson.
Joakim Goldhahn (the guy heading the project where they found the sun chariot carving last week) shows that one of the carved slabs at Kivik, in Sweden's most famous Bronze Age burial, actually made a temporary reappearance on site in the 19th century before getting lost again.
Johnny Karlsson interprets what the 11th/12th century settlement under the modern town of Södertälje was like from the cuts and species of animal bones found there.
Anders Huggert discusses…
aardvarchaeology | May 3, 2010
Tom Christensen, who heads excavations at storied Lejre on Zealand, Denmark, has a paper about the lovely Lejre figurine in ROMU 2009 (full text on-line) and another one in the new issue of Skalk. Here he offers some well-chosen comparative material and presents his arguments for the figurine's gender and identity. Everybody agrees that the figurine's throne, with its wolf heads and pair of ravens, must depict Odin's high seat Hlidskjalf. Everybody also agrees that the piece dates from the 10th century. But Denmark's foremost experts on 1st Millennium dress (and myself) classify the person…
aardvarchaeology | May 2, 2010
A springtime walk along River Nyköpingsån from Täckhammar bridge to Lake Långhalsen.
[More blog entries about beavers, photography, rivers; bävrar, foto, floder, Nyköping.]
aardvarchaeology | May 2, 2010It is of course a major issue of public discourse these days that the Catholic church has long systematically covered up child rape in the interests of the organisation's public image. But to my knowledge, nobody has attempted to justify the rapes with reference to Catholic religious doctrine. The church's attitude has roughly been "We think this is really nasty behaviour, but more importantly we don't want any bad press".
In Nigeria, it is illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to marry. But senator Ahmad Sani Yerima, 49, is under investigation for taking a girl as his fourth wife when she…
aardvarchaeology | May 1, 2010
Bronze Age Scandinavians believed that the sun was pulled across the sky in a chariot by a horse. They built models depicting this out of cast bronze. A well-preserved one has been found at Trundholm on Zealand, and fragments remain of one from TÃ¥gaborg in Scania. They also depicted the motif on burial razors and, rarely, rock-carvings.
The other day (when I found some humble cupmarks), my friends Roger Wikell and Sven Gunnar Broström found the first sun-chariot carving on Sweden's east coast: at Casimirsborg in SmÃ¥land. They are working there with fellow rock-art authorities Joakim…
aardvarchaeology | April 30, 2010
Discreetly hidden under the northern side of the eastern bridgehead of rural Täckhammar bridge is a spray-painted mural. I found it while checking for geocaches. It depicts an evil-looking male face accompanied by a really funny piece of Satanist prose poetry.
"Dark vengeance of cryptic slaughter and Satanic suffering. The boundaries of Hell will brake [!] and humanity fall into frantic oblivion. Hatred and pain will forever rule the realm of Man."
Dark Vengeance is a 1998 computer game. Cryptic Slaughter was an 80s thrash metal band. "Frantic oblivion", though an oxymoron, is actually a…
aardvarchaeology | April 29, 2010
Who knew that it would be so much pure childish fun if someone with decent Photoshop skills put a collection of silly hats on Carolus XVI Gustavus? There's even rumoured to be an unedited picture there, but I certainly can't identify it.
aardvarchaeology | April 29, 2010The ninety-first Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Sexy Archaeology. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology! And keep those hands where I can see them, OK?
Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to Sam at Sorting Out Science. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. The next vacant hosting slot is on 9 June. It's a good way to gain readers. No need to be an anthro pro.
aardvarchaeology | April 29, 2010
In front, a boulder upon which I found cupmarks. Behind, a Bronze Age burnt mound consisting of fire-cracked stones.
In order to study the landscape situation of something you need to know precisely where it is. This poses a problem when it comes to Bronze Age sacrificial finds, because they are almost never made by someone who can document the find spot. They used to be found by farmers and workers before anybody owned a map and before there was a national grid, and they are no longer found much at all.
Sacrificial finds, or "deposits", are defined by two negatives: they are not in graves…
aardvarchaeology | April 27, 2010
Spent the day metal-detecting a lovely high-profile site in Uppland for a colleague. It's turf-covered and a popular haunt of campers and picnic parties. My next detector is definitely going to be one that can differentiate between aluminium and precious metals. I hate aluminium. I took up 111 objects and almost all of them were made of that accursed metal: mainly pull tabs, bottle tops and crumbly nasty wads of foil, but also a tent peg and sundry other things. The oldest find was a 1934 coin. I was a little touched to find a 1980s scout badge, just like the ones I used to wear. And even…
aardvarchaeology | April 26, 2010This past weekend was full of fun duties. The only thing I did exclusively for fun was read a pretty depressing novel about slavery, U.K. LeGuin's Powers (2007).
Represented the Swedish Skeptics off-stage at the Nordic Conjuring Championship in Uppsala, as our organisation sponsored the event. I was surprised to see different competing magicians do the same tricks, and then realised that of course there are fashions in that too. The winner was Reggie Simon, an excellent performer originally from the US, whose act contained wry references to that country's racism and gun-nuttery.
Directed the…
aardvarchaeology | April 25, 2010The 91th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at Sexy Archaeology on Wednesday. Submit great recent stuff to Kurt, your own or somebody else's. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!
The next open hosting slot is on 9 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 | April 22, 2010As mentioned here before, dendrochronology has a problem with confidential data. European dendro labs tend to keep their data as in-house trade secrets in order to be able to charge for their services. This means that the labs function as black boxes: you pay a fee, stick a piece of wood into the box, a date comes out the other end, and you have no way to evaluate the process taking place inside. This is poor science.
For reasons of climate skepticism, a London banker named Douglas Keenan has now probably managed to liberate a 7000 year base curve for Irish oak from Queen's University Belfast…
aardvarchaeology | April 20, 2010Juniorette has drawn a pretty fierce lion. I imagine sitting in a tree, being growled at from below.
aardvarchaeology | April 19, 2010Because of blogging and my involvement in the skeptical pro-science movement, in recent years I have come into close contact with Americans as never before in my adult life. More than half of Aard's readers are in the US. It's almost like when I met my wife and suddenly learned lots about China.
A couple of things recur in people's commentary here, largely on religious and political issues. My outlook is clearly quite exotic to many Americans. I view mainstream US politics as half of a full political spectrum, where voters really only get to choose between two different brands of conservative…
aardvarchaeology | April 16, 2010
To my surprise, I found that the Cocteau Twins' 1988 song "Athol-Brose" is not named after a comet but after a Scottish drink consisting of oatmeal, honey, whiskey and cream. I'd like a Bose-Einstein condensate with mine, please.
aardvarchaeology | April 15, 2010It's been more than four years since the first time I blogged about how cool it is to have broadband on a train. But I still haven't gotten over it. Trainblogging again! The sun is shining and Södermanland zips past outside the window.
I'm on my way to Linköping to drop off finds at the County Museum and teach a class on Late Iron Age elite settlement in Ãstergötland. The finds drop-off is one of the loose threads that remain for me to tie up after my last book project. Backpack and a cardboard box full of goodies from Sättuna in Kaga and other great sites!
BTW, is anybody reading this in…
aardvarchaeology | April 13, 2010Dear Reader, you need to listen to the Drabblecast. I just listened to the latest episode and was completely blown away by the vast amount of work, wit and musical talent that goes into each episode. Norm Sherman is like this uncapped oil well that's constantly shooting a big fat unstoppable wad of creativity into the new media.
aardvarchaeology | April 12, 2010One of H.P. Lovecraft's least successful horror stories is "Medusa's Coil", a 1930 collaboration with Zealia Bishop. The story builds to one of the hideous final denouements that Lovecraft liked to end his stories with.
Nor was it right that the neighbours should know that other horror which my strange host of the night could not bring himself to tell me--that horror which he must have learned, as I learned it, from details in the lost masterpiece of poor Frank Marsh.
It would be too hideous if they knew that the one-time heiress of Riverside--the accursed gorgon or lamia whose hateful…
aardvarchaeology | April 11, 2010The 90th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at A Hot Cup of Joe on Wednesday. Submit great recent stuff to Carl, your own or somebody else's. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!
The next open hosting slot is on 9 June. If you're a blogger with an interest in the anthro/archaeo field, drop me a line! No need to be a pro.