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 | August 10, 2009I was brought up to believe that I am special. I was told that I am unusually smart and gifted. Whether or not this is true, it has given me a deep-seated expectation of myself to do great(ish) things, to achieve a bit more than the average Joe, to stand out from the crowd, to gain recognition.
Most people of course achieve very little that is noteworthy beyond the solid humble everyday victories of a quiet life. I'm sure that most people do not have a sense that this is in any way insufficient. I'm also sure that many of these average achievers have talent and potential far beyond that…
aardvarchaeology | August 8, 2009
[More blog entries about sweden, nature, photography; skärgård, foto, stockholm, natur.]
Tärnskär ("Tern Island") is a low seal-like grey cliff on the outer margin of the Stockholm archipelago. My buddy Dendro-Ãke only goes there when an eastern wind is blowing, because if your engine dies and there's any other wind, you end up on the other side of the Baltic.
The archipelago is a really amazing land/seascape. Imagine a flat gneiss and granite plateau criss-crossed by huge faults and crevices. Now run a few glaciations across it, sanding it down real good, so that everything is…
aardvarchaeology | August 7, 2009As pointed out here many times before, archaeology is a bad career choice as the labour market is tiny and ridiculously overpopulated. I mainly keep tabs on the academic subset of this labour market. But via Alun I've received news that UK contract archaeology, the business where you remove and document sites that get in the way of land development, is in poor shape because of the economic recession. The Institute for Archaeologists announces that one in six jobs in contract archaeology has been lost since the start of the recession, with more losses likely in the near future.
In Sweden,…
aardvarchaeology | August 6, 2009
From Birmingham art students Tanya Mircheva and Mihaela Calin, a clip about office-job boredom.
aardvarchaeology | August 6, 2009
Illerup Ãdal in Jutland is known for one of Denmark's largest and most well-excavated war booty sacrifices, most of it dating from the early 3rd century AD. (See my recent entry about the similar Swedish site Finnestorp.) As I've learned from my friend Tim Olsson's new book about such sites, there's a second find spot at Vædebro, right where the Illerup stream empties into Lake Mossø, a few kilometres from the war booty site. The artefact finds here are few, but the bones of 25-30 people were found about 1960, mainly robust men, some with battle wounds. And now the Vædebro site has…
aardvarchaeology | August 5, 2009[More blog entries about mining, Norway, abandonedbuildings, photography; gruvor, Norge, övergivnahus, foto.]
From my buddy Claes Pettersson, pix he took in July at the abandoned Christian VI mine of Røros, Norway, at 62°N. It's a copper mine that was worked from 1723 until shortly after 1945. Located near the Swedish border and far from the sea, this is one of the coldest parts of Norway, which means that the wooden structures don't decay much through microbial action -- they mainly just erode.
aardvarchaeology | August 4, 2009
From Aard regular Christina Reid (she started commenting less than a week after the blog opened, bless her heart!), a few pictures from Mid-summer Eve at the Scandinavian Cultural Centre in Burnaby, British Columbia. Tina and her hubby are active in the Reik Félag reenactment group. And her brother is the singer of Viking/Tolkienian metallers Amon Amarth!
We're seeing two periods of Scandy history being celebrated here. Tina & hubby represent the Viking Period in the 9th & 10th centuries. The other people, the ones erecting a May pole, are into the rural culture of the 19th…
aardvarchaeology | August 2, 2009I just finished reading Nils Ahnlund's 1953 history of Stockholm up to 1523, which marks the end of the Middle Ages in Swedish historiography. Its 538 pages of text offer less concrete detail than an archaeologist might wish for, and I soon lost track of everybody named Anders Jönsson and Jöns Andersson, but it was an interesting read nevertheless. Here are a few of the best things I learned.
Now I finally understand why the inhabitants of Dalecarlia play such a large role in the city's and country's history. I mean, OK, there's reasonable farmland up there, but it is way north and the…
aardvarchaeology | July 31, 2009
This picture is not from a film. It is something you would see back in the 17th century: a burning real tall ship. At the Djurö bridge, not far from Djurhamn where I have done fieldwork, is Point Brännskeppet, "the burnt ship", which commemorates the wreck of the Rikswasa ("Sheaf of the Realm") that burned and sank there in 1623 and was clumsily salvaged in the 1960s. But the image shows the death of the Prins Willem, a 1980 replica of a 1649 trading ship of the Dutch East India Company. It burned the night before last in Den Helder harbour.
Burning is a common and often intentional end…
aardvarchaeology | July 30, 2009A woman in New Hampshire allegedly bludgeons her eight-months pregnant friend to death. Then she performs an amateur C-section on her victim, delivers the baby and assumes maternal responsibilities for it. After a week she and the baby girl, who is in fairly good health, are apprehended by the police at a homeless shelter. There is no report as to whether baby-stealing was the motive of the murder or just a humanitarian afterthought.
aardvarchaeology | July 29, 2009The seventy-second Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at A Hot Cup of Joe. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. The next vacant hosting slot is on 9 23 September. No need to be an anthro pro.
And check out the new Skeptics' Circle!
aardvarchaeology | July 29, 2009
My recent talk in Trävattna parish hall, Västergötland, was covered by two regional papers. Rune Torstenson has kindly scanned the items for me. The headlines read "Power once originated in the mead-hall" and "Searching for ancient power-wielders". To read the articles, click on the images.
aardvarchaeology | July 28, 2009
Dear Reader, if you are a wasp, do not attempt to nest in my house. You will only Release the Fucking Fury, said with a bad Swedish accent. I will plug your nest's entries and vacuum your workers as they return from foraging. Do not sting my chin, the only bit protruding from my raincoat. Do not nest in my house. That is all. Thank you.
Update next day: Dear Reader, if you are a mouse, do not attempt to forage for food behind Samarkeolog's fridge.
aardvarchaeology | July 27, 2009Inspired yet again by the Carlquist & Järv anthology of library history I mentioned recently, I decided to write something about the libraries of my life. I'm fortunate in that I have always been able to take libraries for granted. I feel at home in them.
Learning to read at age four or five, I may have been taken about that time to some forgotten library in Greenwich, Conn. But the first one I remember and one of the two most important ones in my life so far is Saltsjöbaden public library, located at the Dump, Tippen, the local mall which took its name from being built on the site of a…
aardvarchaeology | July 26, 2009The 72nd Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at A Hot Cup of Joe on Wednesday. Submit your best recent stuff to Carl before Tuesday evening. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!
aardvarchaeology | July 25, 2009
Yesterday saw the season's first mushroom expedition. A bit early for real diversity, with only four edible species collected, but on the other hand we found quite a lot of chanterelles.
Chanterelle, Kantarell, Cantharellus cibarius
Birch bolete, Björksopp, Leccinum scabrum
Orange Birch Bolete, Tegelsopp, Leccinum versepelle
Red russula, Tegelkremla, Russula decolorans
As a Swedish journalist once wrote, paraphrasing the Scarlet Pimpernel:
They find him here
They find him there
They say they find him everywhere
Is he in Heaven or is he in Hell?
That damned elusive Chanterelle
aardvarchaeology | July 24, 2009
One of the major influences that combined to form Western psychedelic rock was traditional Asian music. But musicians in Asia picked up the vibe pretty quickly and started to play their own versions of it. Lately I've been listening to a great compilation of the stuff, and I'm particularly struck by the 1975 track "Gönül Sabreyle Sabreyle" (hear it streamed here). The band playing it is the brother trio Ãç Hürel, "The Three Hürels", and the song's title would in English be something like "Oh Sabreyle, my heart, Sabreyle". Reading up about the band on the web, I've learned that the…
aardvarchaeology | July 23, 2009
Sven Gunnar Broström, known as Stone Gunnar.
In June of last year I reported on my visit to a small research excavation directed by my Fornvännen boss Lars Larsson at Botkyrka golf club south of Stockholm. The Stensborg site is highly unusual by the standards of this part of the country: a place near the sea shore where some of the region's first farmers congregated almost 6000 years ago and did some really weird shit. Sven Gunnar Broström, PhD h.c., one of Sweden's most active and respected self-taught archaeologists, discovered it in the late 60s. Simply through fieldwalking he and…
aardvarchaeology | July 21, 2009
Sösdala style silver sheet fittings. Image from the Finnestorp project's web site.
Among the many things Swedish archaeologists envy our Danish neighbours are their splendid war booty sacrifices mainly of the 3rd, 4th and 5th centuries AD. These are silted-up lakes whose anaerobic peat deposits are full of vandalised military equipment taken from less fortunate invading armies (more here). In Sweden, we know of only two major sites in this category: Skedemosse on Ãland, which was unfortunately drained and ploughed out long before archaeologists came to work there, and Finnestorp in Vä…
aardvarchaeology | July 19, 2009I'm reading Eric Carlquist's and Harry Järv's massive new anthology of library history, Mänsklighetens minne. For an idea about what the anthology is like, consider that all the contributors are male and that the youngest of them was born in 1947. For an idea about me, consider that I would happily have read all 866 pages of it already in my later teens.
Reading this book, I'm struck yet again by the difference between knowledge "on good authority" and scientific knowledge. Throughout the European and Islamic Middle Ages, throughout the millennia of Chinese civilisation, ancient texts were…