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 22, 2008The European Council of Skeptical Organizations (ECSO) has set up an on-line forum.
Explains ECSO chairman Amardeo Sarma,
"The purpose of this forum is to promote discussion with ECSO and other Skeptics Organisations. So if you have some question or a suggestion to a particular Skeptics Organisation and do not have direct access to them or do not speak their language, here is where you can ask. If someone from that organisation is reading this forum, you should get an answer or reaction. If possible, ECSO members will point responsible people from that organisation to this question or…
aardvarchaeology | June 21, 2008The forty-third Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Paddy K's Swedish Extravaganza. Archaeology and anthropology, and all regulated by the rota system!
The Rota System, from the Old Church Slavic word for "ladder" or "staircase", was a system of collateral succession practiced (though imperfectly) in Kievan Rus' and later Appanage and early Muscovite Russia, in which the throne passed not linearly from father to son, but laterally from brother to brother (usually to the fourth brother) and then to the eldest son of the eldest brother who had held the throne. The system was begun by…
aardvarchaeology | June 21, 2008
Looking closer at this cover of a Chinese pirate edition of Disney's 1937 animated feature Snow White, we find a couple of fine Engrish phrases.
"Latinum Edition" is pretty good. But wouldn't you agree that "Still the Fairest of the Mall" takes the cake?
aardvarchaeology | June 19, 2008It's been almost a year since the last de-lurk. Aard currently has over 150 returning visitors daily (out of about 800 uniques). Since not everyone checks in every day, this translates to several hundred -- possibly a thousand -- regulars who read the blog at least once a week. So, everybody, please comment away, as briefly or verbosely as you like, and do consider telling us a little about yourself!
aardvarchaeology | June 19, 2008
Back in February I showed you some pix of abandoned tree houses at Djurhamn. One of them had a computer, just like my son once reported visiting a tree house with a typewriter.
I've spent the past three days metal detecting in the same area, falsifying our working hypothesis that there would be easily accessible 16th and 17th century stuff there. But I did find more tree house ruins. And one had an interesting piece of furniture: a gynaecologist's examination chair!? Turned out that the tree house was built on the margin of a dump area where all kinds of strange stuff was sitting, and…
aardvarchaeology | June 17, 2008With my buddies Kjell Andersson and Lasse Winroth, and supported by the amazing Ehrsson brothers Rune & Tore, I've been back metal detecting around the Harbour of the Sheaf Kings for two days. Last summer I did some work along the current shores of the harbour site, covering available flat ground and finding nothing I could definitely date before the year 1800. Then I moved inland to the landlocked part of the one-time harbour basin, and immediately found a sword from the early 1500s.
We're currently concentrating on bits of flat ground around the landlocked basin, hoping to find traces…
aardvarchaeology | June 17, 2008Two entries of Afarensis's have inspired me to set something down that I've been thinking about for a long time.
Afarensis mentions a forthcoming paper by Lyman, VanPool & O'Brien that will be published in the Journal of Archaeological Science. They're looking at change in arrowhead types over time from an evolutionary perspective.
"...there is evidence of an initial burst of variation in projectile points at the time bow-and-arrow technology was introduced and that prehistoric artisans experimentally sought arrow points that worked effectively. Following that initial burst, less-…
aardvarchaeology | June 17, 2008I have become increasingly fascinated with place names. The other day I bought my second copy of Svenskt ortnamnslexikon, "Swedish place-name encyclopedia" (ed. Mats Wahlberg 2003). One often-consulted copy is in my office, and I've missed it many times -- at home while reading or conversing, and particularly in the car when passing intriguing signposts.
Names are hardly ever nonsensical collections of sounds. We may not know what they mean any more, or if we know we don't give it much thought. (In my family, we're named He of the War God, Senior Imperial Concubine from Space, Name of God and…
aardvarchaeology | June 16, 2008Asked a reader,
"There are many, many academic bloggers out there feverishly blogging about their areas of interest. Still, there are many, many more academics who don't. So, why do you blog ..."
As I've noted before, I blog because it makes me feel like a ten-foot diamond on a Christmas tree. To me, blogging doesn't really follow from being an academic. Both my academic work and the blogging I do in my spare time follow from a common cause: I just wanna have fun. I make no effort to cover global archaeology news in my blog, and I'm far from comprehensive even on Scandy archaeology news: I…
aardvarchaeology | June 15, 2008Played a fun card game with a somewhat off-colour name today: Spank the Monkey from 2003. The object of the game is literally to catch a monkey and whack its little hairy behind. Why? Because all the players are employees at a junk yard, and the monkey's being a nuisance. It's built itself a tower of junk and sits atop it, making ugly gestures, screeching and probably flinging poo at the customers. To catch it, you need to build a junk tower of your own while keeping the other players from building faster than you and catching the monkey.
Much of the fun stems from the absurd combinations of…
aardvarchaeology | June 15, 2008The 43rd instalment of the Four Stone Hearth anthro & archaeo blogging carnival will come on-line at Paddy K's Swedish Extravaganza on Wednesday 18 June. Send links to good recent anthroblogging to him! It needn't be your own stuff: submit all the goodies you've read lately.
The next open hosting slot is on 16 July. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me. No need to be an anthro pro.
aardvarchaeology | June 13, 2008I've made two archaeological field interventions today. First I seeded a site with finds, then I got some finds out of another site.
Fieldwalking back in March, I found a grindstone and some knapped quartz at a Bronze Age site in Botkyrka parish. Taking their positions with GPS, I've filed a brief archive report on the finds to make sure that the data get into the sites-and-monuments register. But it turned out that the museum doesn't want to actually own that kind of low-end finds unless they're from a stratigraphic context. And I don't want to keep the stuff around either. So this morning I…
aardvarchaeology | June 12, 2008Lately I've been playing more board games, thanks to gaming friends moving to my area, and also to my son and his buddies reaching an age where they can understand and enjoy games. I have a number of good board games from the 70s, 80s and 90s, and the newest one in the house is Blokus from 2000. Now I'm thinking of buying something new, and I'd appreciate some suggestions.
Here's what I have in mind.
A new game, 2006 or later.
Suitable for age 12 upward.
Typical session length less than 4 hours.
English, German or Scandy.
Not a spin-off on an earlier game such as Settlers or Carcassonne.
So…
aardvarchaeology | June 12, 2008At the request of Aard regular and archaeologist Mathias Blobel in Freiburg, Germany, here's a summary of a recent paper in Swedish.
In Fornvännen 2007:3, husband & wife historians of archaeology Drs Ãsa Gillberg and Ola W. Jensen note that there are currently ongoing attempts to train dogs to sniff out archaeology, much like they have proved capable of finding illegal drugs, recently buried murder victims, even cancerous tumours. Results so far are inconclusive. The point of Gillberg & Jensen's note is instead to draw attention to an obscure Swedish antiquarian, Johan Lindman, who…
aardvarchaeology | June 10, 2008[More blog entries about fiction, timetravel, sf, sciencefiction; sf, sciencefiction, tidsresor, litteratur, novell]
Alvin Gavel just graduated from high school. (He's the son of Aard regular Kai who keeps the bilingual Pointless Anecdotes blog.) This young man has to my knowledge grown up entirely in Sweden. But I would be impressed by his recent time travel story even if English had been his first language. Check it out!
Update 12 June: Mr. Gavel informs me that he wrote the story already two years ago. It is the work of a high school freshman. In reply I have told Mr. Gavel that, in my…
aardvarchaeology | June 9, 2008The micro-SD flash memory chip that came with my new smartphone has some interesting issues with data integrity. I mostly use it to store sound files in the mp3 format, both pop songs of a few MB each and podcasts taking up tens of megabytes. And while listening to podcasts, in the middle of them, I have repeatedly come across three interesting and disturbing errors. The flash memory makes psychedelic remixes of my sound files!
As I listen to one mp3 file, I suddenly hear several seconds from another file before the original recording resumes.
As I listen to one mp3 file, I suddenly hear…
aardvarchaeology | June 7, 2008Good news from Egypt: the country's parliament has passed a new child protection law that, among other wise measures, criminalises female genital mutilation and raises the legal age of marriage to 18 for both men and women. Daily News of Egypt has a long article on the subject (from back when it was still a bill with an uncertain future).
Bayoumi ... says that beating hurts children physically and emotionally. The Prophet Mohamed, he added, called for a kind of reprimand that does not inflict harm or cause psychological damage.
In agreement, Refaat El Saied said that some would say they will…
aardvarchaeology | June 7, 2008Here's an ace animated film clip showing how the Phoenix Lander manoeuvered its camera/digger arm to take a picture of the surface under its own belly a few days ago. Gives you a good sense of how the thing looks way out there...
More recent clips here.
aardvarchaeology | June 7, 2008I'm not a very frequent theatre-goer, and if I don't like a play, I leave in the intermission. But I have had the good fortune to see some excellent productions through the years, notably of Shakespeare. (It is of course entirely possible to play Shakespeare poorly too, and I've seen it done both by professionals and by amateurs.) I haven't seen all his plays, and I've read only two, but dangle an opportunity to conveniently see more in front of me, and chances are I'll bite.
During my recent Orkney jaunt, I read a fascinating biography of William Shakespeare, Stephen Greenblatt's best-…
aardvarchaeology | June 6, 2008
After some culling and editing, I've put 74 snaps from my visit to Orkney on-line. Comments and questions are most welcome!
[More blog entries about orkney, photography, Scotland; Orkney, Skottland, foto, fotografi.]