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 | July 18, 2008Amateur archaeologist Bob Lind, whom I have often mentioned here in connection with his wild archaeoastronomical ideas, issued me a challenge today (and I translate):
Hello Martin!
I saw a statement of yours in yesterday's Sydsvenska Dagbladet, where you encourage researchers to blog more, which you have certainly done yourself both regarding Ale's stones and Heimdallr's stones. And what rot it all is.
Since you have insulted me in writing to journalists and called me an arch-idiot [Sw. ärkeidiot] among other things, while also claiming that my research regarding Ale's stones and Heimdallr's…
aardvarchaeology | July 17, 2008
Reading up on some pseudoscientific ideas common among dowsing-rod enthusiasts, I happened upon a funny detail. Many Swedish dowsers believe in the "Curry grid", consisting of "power lines" across the surface of the Earth, detectable only by dowsing. They were invented (not discovered, as they are entirely fictitious, and never survive blind tests) by German physician Manfred Curry (1899-1953). As it turns out, Curry was far more known during his lifetime as a keen sailor and student of sailboat design, inventor of the cam cleat (Sw. fjädrande skotlÃ¥s) and contributor to the invention of…
aardvarchaeology | July 16, 2008On my desk is a copy of the 2009 Skepdude pinup calendar. It features lascivious images of many prominent skeptical gentlemen, including D.J. Grothe, Hemant Mehta and Brian Dunning. For March, there's even a picture of a skinny white dude in partial déshabillé, skilfully shot by my art-school-trained wife at sunset in the woods just above our housing area.
If your cognitive abilities are more strongly perturbed by the female form than the male one, there's the 2009 Skepchick calendar. All for a good cause: sending cool people to The Amazing Meeting who wouldn't otherwise be able to be there.…
aardvarchaeology | July 14, 2008I know what a documentary film is. I know what fiction is. And I know what a mockumentary is: a fictional documentary. Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy attempts to combine these approaches within the framework of comedic fiction, and it left me really confused.
Director and narrator Randy Olson exists, I know that. But what about the scientists he interviews? Are all of them real? Some of them? None? There certainly are a few pretty outlandish characters there. Yet the only people in the movie I could be entirely sure must be played by actors were the in-movie camera man and sound guy, because…
aardvarchaeology | July 13, 2008
Paddy K is hiking in Scotland without any portable internet connection. He just texted me a request for the coordinates of the Bridge of Orchy. He's currently in Inverardran, about 20 km SSE of the bridge. People in the area who would like to meet a charming Irish/Swedish blogger are encouraged to write me for contact details.
As the Beatles sang on Sgt Pepper's, "I get GPS coordinates with a little help from my friends".
Larger map
aardvarchaeology | July 11, 2008Everybody with an interest in anthropology and archaeology who isn't lost in some green summery haze far from the nearest internet connection -- it's time to contribute good new blog entries to next week's Four Stone Hearth blog carnival. You needn't have written them yourself: if you've found something worth reading recently, submit it to Tim at Remote Central.
aardvarchaeology | July 11, 2008I often dig old crap out of the ground, so today's chore at the summer house provided some novelty. I won't say welcome novelty: I re-cut the cesspit and emptied the outhouse barrel, burying new crap.
In recent years, there has been a vogue among archaeological museums to host "incavations". Museum visitors are invited to bring stuff that has meaning to them, and it is ceremonially buried in the museum grounds. It's basically a pomo version of the time-hallowed custom where the town mayor and his buddies would bury a metal box with papers and coins under the cornerstone of the new post office…
aardvarchaeology | July 10, 2008Today we dug and sieved our 33rd and last square-meter test pit at Djurhamn, and I took the gear back to the County Museum's stores. Unless a colleague with better early-modern pottery skillz than mine provides any surprises, it seems that we have not found any of the evidence for 16th/17th century harbour life that we sought. We do however have quite a bit of 18th/19th century household and tavern refuse. And it seems unlikely to be pure chance that the single pit that yielded any bones was the one nearest to the abandoned cemetery depicted on a 1630s map of the area. Osteology will tell.
I…
aardvarchaeology | July 7, 2008
I spent Thursday and Friday digging test pits with a group of energetic volunteers at Djurhamn, the first two of seven planned days in the field. The great Ehrsson brothers are now joined by an equally solid Ehrsson nephew, among other hard-working people. We're looking for archaeological evidence for historically attested land activity around a harbour whose seafloor is covered with 17th and 18th century refuse dumped from ships. Written sources collected by Katarina Schoerner mention "the big quay" and "the military camp" including an "ale hut", but we have no idea where they were, really…
aardvarchaeology | July 5, 2008
The forty-fourth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Greg Laden's blog. Archaeology and anthropology, and all about luta livre!
Luta livre is a broad term referring to wrestling in Portuguese. In Brazil, it may also refer to a martial art that resembles catch wrestling. With the introduction of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, where Brazilian fighter Royce Gracie dominated the field with apparent ease, many English language martial arts publications rushed to find and translate older Brazilian articles regarding the history of Gracie jiu-jitsu. It was common knowledge that the…
aardvarchaeology | July 4, 2008
Here's a set of pics from the Music Tuscany mini-festival near San' Giovanni d'Asso in Tuscany, Italy, last week.
aardvarchaeology | July 4, 2008
I've put some pix from my recent trip to Tuscany in Italy on-line.
In other news, my wife has suggested a brilliant and radical re-interpretation of the Swedish 70s dansband pop hit "Margareta", by Sten & Stanley. Comprehensible only to speakers of Scandy, I'm afraid.
aardvarchaeology | July 3, 2008Journey to 10,000 BC is a new made-for-TV documentary about Clovis-era North American archaeology and palaeontology (not to be confused with Roland Emmerich's baroque fantasy feature 10,000 BC). The format of the film is conventional: a voiceover intercut with clips from interviews with scholars. The academics acquit themselves well and get a lot of interesting information across in the brief soundbites allotted them. This is the film's main strength. The voiceover (written by David Padrusch and Ian Stoker-Long) isn't too bad either: there are a few sensationalistic bloopers and endorsements…
aardvarchaeology | July 2, 2008Here's an interesting development. Top science bloggers have become a commodity hot enough that a situation like that in European football is emerging. Players are getting snatched from team to team through hostile buyout (Carl Zimmer of The Loom), and the number of really good non-pro players is dwindling (Phil Plait the Bad Astronomer just went pro).
I'm not sure if Carl got offered better pay than at Sb. Both bloggers did get steady writing gigs as columnists for Discover Magazine, which translates to some money (though most likely not much). In an attention-based economy, the market is…
aardvarchaeology | June 29, 2008Since some time in the early 80s I've laboured delightedly and intermittently to catch up with Ursula K. LeGuins oeuvre. I've covered her collections of short fiction and essays, and I will soon have her novels done, leaving the poetry and short kids' books.
Apart from her latest novel, I've yet to read 1980's The Beginning Place. In fact, I'm reading it now. And it's a good read so far, a critique of modern US society foreshadowing Always Coming Home. But there's one curious bug in the logic.
Imagine a gate to another world. When you pass the gate your perceptions continue without break: you…
aardvarchaeology | June 28, 2008Drove yesterday to the village of San Giovanni d'Asso (Sw. Sankt Hans pÃ¥ Dass). Stopped on the way at an excavation, the church site of San Pietro in Pava, where as yet poorly known Roman activity gave way to continuous church use from the 6th through the 13th century. Nobody was on site because of the siesta, put I read the signposts in Italian as best I could and showed the kids two recently uncovered skeletons in the churchyard. Tricky conditions, earth hardening in the baking sun, many fresh breaks and trowel abrasions on the bones. I would prefer myself to work at night or under an…
aardvarchaeology | June 26, 2008Got up early this morning, six thirty, and slipped out for an hour's walk. The sun was already pretty high but still veiled in mist. I walked past vineyards and olive groves toward a farmhouse until yapping guard dogs made me turn on my heel, and then I left the road.
The area is heavily altered by agriculture, but still there is quite a lot of woodland and brush. I descended into the valley of a little stream, dodged bushes and a large spider web, and found water trickling at the bottom of a deep-cut little channel, like a ditch among the bushes. Stepping over, I entered untouched greenery.…
aardvarchaeology | June 25, 2008I write this sitting in a rental car near the Cathedral of Montalcino, a small Medieval fortified hilltop town in the heart of Tuscany's brunello wine district. Sweat is running freely down my forehead and nose, no matter that the windows are open and the car is in a shaded alley. Wife and children are shopping for groceries while I have saved our vehicle from a parking ticket.
Montalcino is a maze of terracotta masonry and grey stucco, steep narrow streets, and glimpses of amazing vistas across the vineyards and valleys far below. A guide leaflet in Babelfish English informs me that the…
aardvarchaeology | June 24, 2008
The beavers are rallying in Sweden, multiplying and repossessing old habitat. The other day I rode my bike to Lake Källtorpssjön and photographed some beaver work.
aardvarchaeology | June 23, 2008Over at Podcastle, I just heard an amazing reading/performance of an amazing surrealist love story, "Fourteen Experiments in Postal Delivery". It was written by John Schoffstall, first published as text two years ago, and read by Heather Lindsley at Random Jane. It's got some gore and a few naughty words, it's nerdily intellectual, it's lyrically written and it's really, really funny.