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 | February 13, 2008Good news from Uppsala: after the end of the year, there will be only one PhD student in archaeology left in that august academic city. This is the result of a simple reform enacted ten years ago by Minister for Education Carl Tham: since that date, no student may enter a PhD program at a Swedish university unless she has funding. The reform was a non-event in well-funded economically productive subjects, but it hit the humanities like a bomb. PhD student seminars started to melt away as people graduated or gave up.
But, as I said: good news. It's neither in the best interest of students nor…
aardvarchaeology | February 12, 2008Co-discoverer of DNA and Nobel laureate James Watson is the Seed Media Group's board of directors' scientific advisor. Not a member of some advisory group: the board's single advisor. He has remained so despite a highly publicised racist utterance four months ago.
In October last year Watson was quoted as being "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" as "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really." This is not the first time that Watson lets slip a really bisarre prejudice: he's slurred women,…
aardvarchaeology | February 11, 2008Post-modernist hyper-relativism unexpectedly rears its ugly dying head in the form of a call for papers from one Tera Pruitt for the otherwise respectable Archaeological Review from Cambridge. Note the scare quotes around the words truth and valid claims.
Call for Papers (April 2009 Issue)
Beyond the Facts: Invention and Reinvention in Archaeological Practice
The Archaeological Review from Cambridge invites papers on the theme of invention and re-invention in archaeology. The past quarter century has seen a rich academic debate about the nature of archaeological interpretation. Post-modern…
aardvarchaeology | February 11, 2008Science Debate 2008 is an initiative to inject more science policy into the run-up to the US presidential elections. Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum over at The Intersection just announced that they have sent formal invitations for an April 18 public science policy debate in Philadelphia to candidates Clinton, Huckabee, McCain and Obama.
Every Sb reader's help is needed. Says Sheril:
"This is our collective call and if there were ever a time that we need your help, it's now. We need to make a ton of noise about this. We need to make the campaigns say they'll come to the Philly debate.…
aardvarchaeology | February 11, 2008
I'm a big fan of Swedish-Finnish ethno band Hedningarna ("the Pagans"). Centred around three musicians working with a series of very fine singers, the band released five albums from 1989 to 1999. Their method was to go for the most primitive acoustic instruments known to Swedish ethnic music and plug them into various exotic electronics, producing a sound heavily influenced by Jimi Hendrix yet unmistakeably rural and Scandinavian. Most aficionados count the second and third albums (Kaksi and Trä), where two amazing Finnish traditional female singers dominate the sound, as the band's creative…
aardvarchaeology | February 10, 2008
Back in October when myself & the family were in Beijing, we spent a Friday at the city's main amusement park. The place was almost deserted, so the kids didn't have to stand in line at all. They would repeatedly ride these huge attractions all on their own.
Beijing amusement park has an old 80s part full of run-down Japanese gear, all flaking paint and rusty welding work. Then there's the northern periphery where they've installed new bigger attractions, each with a long explanatory sign in Engrish. One is a two-story carousel intended to create the impression of visiting a European…
aardvarchaeology | February 9, 2008
I hardly ever remember my dreams. When waking and then going back to sleep, like on a Saturday morning, I can however sometimes bring back fragments into the real world.
This morning I dreamed that we were moving to a new apartment in an unfamiliar area that was apparently not far from where we live now. The apartment swap took place one object at a time: I would carry a lamp over to the new place, and the bearded guy who lived there would come walking the other way with a potted plant. It was after dark. Asphalt, fluorescent street lights, passing the front of a grocery store.
I had no…
aardvarchaeology | February 8, 2008
The past week I've twice heard Nirvana's 1993 song "Heart Shaped Box" on the radio. I realised that its lyrics have a number of remarkably powerful lines. Kurt Cobain was a talented man. Here are the song's two verses.
She eyes me like a Pisces when I am weak
I've been locked inside your heart-shaped box for weeks
I've been drawn into your magnet tar pit trap
I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black
Meat-eating orchids forgive no one just yet
Cut myself on angel hair and baby's breath
Broken hymen of your highness, I'm left black
Throw down your umbilical noose so I can climb right…
aardvarchaeology | February 7, 2008I got another job rejection letter today. Five out of 79 applicants (6%) got research positions in Linköping, 2.5 hours by car from my home. The five are two chemists, one neurobiologist, one environmental scientist and one gender studies scholar. At least I wasn't beaten by any colleague.
What bugs me is the way they trimmed those 79 candidates down to eleven that were interviewed. One criterion was that they only contacted people who have already had post-docs. This biased the selection heavily toward well-funded disciplines where post-docs are plentiful. It's much easier to get one in…
aardvarchaeology | February 6, 2008
As chronicled here in many entries over the past months, computer consultant, New Age author and homeopath Bob G. Lind has carved out his own niche in Swedish amateur archaeology with controversial interpretations of Scanian archaeological sites Ales stenar and Höga stenar. Another Bob Lind is a famous US folk singer. Yet now I've learned that Bob G. Lind is a singer and a song-writer too!
My Malmö colleague Ingela Kishonti has kindly sent me scans of the cover and labels of a 45-rpm vinyl single that Bob G. put out in 1978 on NCB/K.M.C. Records. (This does not appear to have been be the…
aardvarchaeology | February 5, 2008
Spent the day walking around Djurhamn with my colleague Kjell Andersson of the Stockholm County Museum, searching for visible field monuments and generally scoping the area out for our coming investigations. We found no new features belonging to the 16th and 17th cenury harbour, but we identified some good areas for further metal detecting and test pitting.
Also, I added two sites to my growing collection of abandoned club houses and tree houses (of which I have spoken before here, here and here). Note that one has the remains of a PC, an old 386 or 486 judging from the empty processor…
aardvarchaeology | February 2, 2008This is the first time that I'm aware of the US primary elections. I've never been very interested in the news, having at best a hazy idea even of Swedish politics. Blogging is entirely responsible for my heightened awareness of US political matters over the past two to three years. I've taken to reading US blogs and hanging out in web forums dominated by Americans. And what I've learned scares me.
US politics often look absurd from a European perspective, since the entire bipartisan system maps onto the conservative half of European politics. A case in point is that the US "Left" is called "…
aardvarchaeology | February 1, 2008One evening last week in North Carolina, walking back from Chapel Hill to the Holiday Inn along road 54, I heard this brilliant send-up of everything Barry White ever recorded on the radio. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you "Business Time" with Flight of the Conchords, live on stage!
aardvarchaeology | January 31, 2008
A miniature face on a gilded cast copper-alloy display buckle, 5th century AD
One of the many things us Swedish archaeologists envy our Danish colleagues is their numerous large and well-preserved finds of Iron Age war booty. Clearly people in modern-day Denmark had the custom of sacrificing war booty in holy lakes, and when they silted up and became bogs the anaerobic environment preserved many objects perfectly. Generally, the finds seem to be the campaign gear of invading armies, dominated by weaponry but also including tools, personal items and even a number of boats.
Sweden does have a…
aardvarchaeology | January 30, 2008A pretty Chinese maths teacher said hello to me on ICQ the other day, hoping to marry a Westerner. This inspired me to dig out and re-post the following entry from November 2006.For many years I have spent most of my working days alone at a computer. Alone, but thanks to the internet and messaging software, not lonely. As mentioned before in connection with the story of Lennart, International Casanova, it's good to have a chat now and then with other solitary souls over ICQ. They become your workmates even though they may be located on the other side of the planet in meatspace terms, to use a…
aardvarchaeology | January 30, 2008The thirty-third Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Greg Laden's. His blog is, err, like, laden with archaeology and anthropology.
aardvarchaeology | January 29, 2008Here's a healthy chunk of video footage from the session on blogging about humanities and social sciences that I chaired at the NC Science Blogging Conference Saturday before last. Much of it shows me and Jennifer Jacquet looking blank as we listen to people speaking off-camera.
aardvarchaeology | January 27, 2008I wrote this last night in Florida, but the hotel wifi was on the blink, so I couldn't get it on-line. I am now at Newark airport in New Jersey, having just eaten my first bowl of matzoh soup. Oy vey, good stuff!
Audience frowning in concentration
I've been to gaming conventions and academic conferences and recently my first blogging convention, and now I've experienced my first skeptics' convention: The Amazing Meeting 5.5, a 1.5-day mini-con hosted by the Amazing Randi himself.
James Randi demonstrating Geller-like powers
Friday offered a solid four-hour round-robin lecture on podcasting…
aardvarchaeology | January 25, 2008
Spent yesterday volunteering at the James Randi Educational Foundation, doing manual work and getting to know people. I moved furniture, cleaned up trash, painted a door and pasted errata sheets into books. And everybody was so nice to me! Loads of good conversation and silly jokes. I'm here as a representative of the Swedish Skeptics Society, so I make an effort to overcome my retiring personality and make as many new contacts as I can.
Jeff Wagg bought me breakfast at Denny's. Our party was accosted by a Christian lady who overheard us talking about atheism and wanted us to repent! I…
aardvarchaeology | January 23, 2008
Took a walk around the local geocaches, ended up trapped for half an hour in a nightmarish retirement community. Endless identical white single-story houses with garages and immaculate lawns, the streets deserted in the baking January afternoon. I was half-expecting octogenarian Stepford wives to come hobbling after me with trays of synthetic cookies. Many of the houses appeared to belong to retired military men, there were a lot of star-spangled banners (not many people know that it actually got its name from a Jimi Hendrix tune!), and a memorial garden at one end of the grizzled ghetto…