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 28, 2009It's been one of the warmest and sunniest weeks in a long time. Saturday I invited friends old and new over: we played a game of Tigris & Euphrates, two games of kubb (no, it is not an old Viking game), made a lovely barbecue dinner and took an evening walk to Lake Lundsjön. Our kubb court was laid out meticulously with the aid of two tape measures and Pythagoras' Theorem, just like when you lay out an excavation trench or grid. Later that night I watched a 2006 concert by Max Raabe & Palast-Orchester on TV.
Sunday me & Juniorette visited some old friends of mine: we had lunch in…
aardvarchaeology | June 26, 2009As you may know, Dear Reader, this blog can be perused selectively by theme if you click "Archives" in the menu bar up top. For a long time I've been tagging entries straying from the blog's main themes "NOIBN", Not Otherwise Indicated By Name. But realising recently that there were almost a hundred such entries, I sorted through them and found a few recurring themes there. Thus a bunch of new entry categories:
Environment
Health
Politics
Space
Travel
Getting this sorted out was quite a chore due to the glacial slowness of Sb's poor over-taxed server. But chances are it'll get upgraded…
aardvarchaeology | June 25, 2009
Swedish island-province Ãland's second-largest silver hoard ever was found recently. Dating from the 11th century and consisting mainly of about 1000 German and English coins, it also has some Islamic ones, one from Sigtuna and even one from India, a very rare occurrence. Some hack silver as well, and a piece of gold rod unless I'm mistaken.
The droning noise at the start and end of the above newsreel is a Bronze Age trumpet that had been lying in a bog for almost 2000 years at the time when the hoard was buried and would spend almost another 1000 years there before it was unearthed. Nice…
aardvarchaeology | June 24, 2009Strong black tea is my drug of choice. But I got fed up with caffeine addiction a few years back and started to limit my intake. Currently I'm at 1.5 litres every second day, which means that my system is used to going without caffeine for over 40 hours at a time -- counted from afternoon tea on a Monday to morning tea on a Wednesday for instance. This regimen works out to an average daily intake of 190 milligrams of caffeine. Coffee has about 1.7 times the caffeine in strong black tea, which in turn has 2.7 times the caffeine in Coke. But I never have coffee and very rarely any caffeinated…
aardvarchaeology | June 23, 2009If president Sarkozy really believes that Muslim women are subservient to male members of their families, then he shouldn't try to regulate their clothing. He should draw the full consequences of his beliefs and forbid Muslim women to vote in French elections. If, on the other hand, he believes that these women are autonomous enough to vote independently of their husbands and fathers, then he should let them dress as they please.
Via Mathias Klang.
aardvarchaeology | June 23, 2009I'm finishing writing a book and you guys will have the opportunity to review the manuscript some time towards late summer. The working title is Mead-halls of the Eastern Geats. Elite Settlements and Political Geography AD 375-1000 in Ãstergötland, Sweden.
The title alludes to the Old English epic poem about Beowulf. Set mainly in 6th century Denmark, it is all about the petty kings of the time whose political life was centred upon the feasting hall. That's where raids were planned, guests entertained, loot from raids shared out, religious rituals performed, epic poetry about raids listened…
aardvarchaeology | June 22, 2009
Dendrochronology is the study of tree-rings to determine when and where a tree has grown. Everybody knows that trees produce one ring every year. But the rings also vary in width according to each year's local weather conditions. If you've got enough rings in a wood sample, then their widths form a unique "bar code". Collect enough samples of various ages from buildings and bog wood, and you can join the bar codes up to a reference curve covering thousands of years.
Dendrochronology has a serious organisational problem that impedes its development as a scientific discipline and tends to…
aardvarchaeology | June 21, 2009
The Rundkvist family right before we went in and apprehended the extraterrestrial. Photo F. Gilljam.
Friday was Mid-summer's Eve. Cycled with the kids to the local maypole celebration. Back home, I assembled the first barbecue I've ever owned and made some really nice souvlaki for our guests.
Saturday we visited Felicia's charming parents in rural Grödinge, not far from where my grandparents used to have a summer house. Learned a lot about beekeeping the hands-on way, saw interesting plants & poultry.
Sunday I took a long bike ride with the kids and logged three geocaches.
And your…
aardvarchaeology | June 19, 2009
The Swedish Humanist Association is currently running our version of the Atheist Bus Campaign in the Stockholm subway. Gud finns nog inte -- "God probably doesn't exist". It may seem a little gratuitous in a country where few people are religious any more, but the ads make the point that there's a lot of quiet Christian influence still around in society. For instance, the country's flag carries a cross. Anyway, the campaign isn't making much of a splash as far as I'm aware, though Göran Rosenberg (a liberal columnist who contributed to a pro-Anthroposophy anthology five years ago) wrote…
aardvarchaeology | June 18, 2009
Here's a cool thing from my buddy Claes Pettersson at Jönköping County Museum. He's been directing big excavations of the town's 17th century industrial precinct, and his team has found something that appears to be a forged gold coin. It consists of a soft grey metal (tin?) with a thin coating of a yellow metal. So far nobody's been able to tell quite what type of coin it was supposed to look like, only that one side features a crowned head. Any ideas?
aardvarchaeology | June 17, 2009The sixty-ninth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Wanna Be An Anthropologist. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. The next open hosting slot is on 29 July 12 August. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. No need to be an anthro pro.
aardvarchaeology | June 17, 2009I'm proud to announce that Fornvännen, Journal of Swedish Antiquarian Research, is now up to speed on the Open Access side. Our excellent librarian and information jockey Gun Larsson has just put the third and fourth issues for last year on-line. Fornvännen appears on-line for free with a six-month delay (due to concerns that the on-line version might otherwise undermine the print version). In the two most recent issues on-line, you can read new research on:
An Early Mesolithic settlement site in wooded Värmland.
A carved stone in a Bohuslän crofter's cellar that may be a Neolithic stele…
aardvarchaeology | June 15, 2009The 70th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at Wanna Be An Anthropologist on Wednesday. Submit your best recent stuff to Paul. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!
aardvarchaeology | June 15, 2009Everybody knows that energy is good for you and calories are bad for you. What newagers, health nuts and alties seem to be completely ignorant of is that both words originate in physics and that they refer to the same thing.
Energy "is a scalar physical quantity that describes the amount of work that can be performed by a force". It can be measured in various units, in the context of food usually kilocalories. A Snickers bar contains about 150 kilocalories, which is equal to the energy content of about 20 ml of gasoline.
Both energy content estimates of course refer to the amount of chemical…
aardvarchaeology | June 14, 2009
Attended the Where Is the Action rock festival with my wife, heard a lot of good music, much of it new to me. Details here and here.
Shopped for presents and spent an hour having cake and reading, all in the charming company of soon-6-y-o Juniorette. She: Donald Duck; me: Språktidningen.
Celebrated the first birthday of another very sweet and promising little Swedish-Chinese girl.
Played Agricola and had yummy home-made pizza in good company at the new abode of Paddy K.
Mused about the strange fact that soon-11-y-o Junior is at sailing camp. I still feel his baby self in my arms.
And your…
aardvarchaeology | June 13, 2009[More blog entries about wheretheactionis, rockfestival, Sweden, duffy, magicnumbers, jennywilson, elperrodelmar, musik, rock, pop; musik, rock, pop, rockfestival, wheretheactionis, duffy, jennywilson, magicnumbers, elperrodelmar.]
Second day of a rainy festival. This time I had the best of company: my wife joined me to hear Duffy. But we started out with excellent popsters the Magic Numbers. Good music, charming banter and nice to look at.
Jenny Wilson was yet another impressive Swedish surprise to me. She looks like David Bowie in drag and sings like the love child of Prince and Annie…
aardvarchaeology | June 12, 2009[More blog entries about wheretheactionis, rockfestival, Sweden, pixies, seasicksteve, missli, musik, rock, pop; musik, rock, pop, rockfestival, wheretheactionis, pixies, missli, seasicksteve.]
I spent yesterday afternoon and evening at a rock festival out near the university. I arrived early through pouring rain to scope the place out, wearing my army surplus rain cape and southwester and fieldwork boots, attracting looks. Because of my face? My funny hat? Both? One young man turned to me for help with his ticket. He thought I was crew. My gear is good, though my knees got soaked and my…
aardvarchaeology | June 12, 2009
A month ago news of a wreck found in Sweden's largest lake, Vänern, made the rounds of international media. The story gained traction by an early mention of Viking ships and weapons found alongside the wreck.
Finder Roland Peterson from the Väner Museum now explains that though the ship-building technique used in the wreck was available already in the Viking Period, it then survived for centuries even into the 19th century. He thus deems it possible but not certain that the vessel is very old.
I've taken some small part in the discussion. Though I know little of ship types, I have some…
aardvarchaeology | June 11, 2009Dear Reader CCBC disagrees with me regarding cultural evolution. Here's my thinking, briefly.
Cultures are different from each other and change over time.
New cultural traits seldom arise for well-thought-out adaptive reasons: most are just made up capriciously.
Not all cultural traits are adaptive, i.e. conducive to the long-term survival of a culture in a recognisable form. Most traits are adaptively irrelevant, but some are counteradaptive.
Cultures that accumulate enough counteradaptive traits will either dwindle and disappear, or change dramatically. In either case, the original culture…
aardvarchaeology | June 10, 2009Here are some excellent albums I've been listening to lately on my trusty smartphone. If you're into power pop, alternative rock, US folk and psychedelia, then check them out!
Brendan Benson. Alternative to Love. 2005.
Grand Duchy. Petits Fours. 2009. It's Frank Black and his wife Violet Clark!
Love, Peace and Poetry - Asian Psychedelic Music. A 1999 compilation of cool 60s and 70s stuff.
Maggi, Pierce & E.J. Silver. 2005.
Mopeds. Fortissimo. 2005.
Super Furry Animals. Dark Days/Light Years. 2009.
Teenage Fanclub. Man-made. 2005.