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 | November 15, 2007[More blog entries about skepticism, christianity, religion, atheism, jesus; religion, kristendom, jesus, ateism, skepticism, skepsis.]
Guest blogger Jim Benton, scourge of faiths big and small, pokes a few innovative holes in the logical fabric of Christianity.
Introduction -- Joseph, the 'Five Rocks,' and the Problem of Communication.
This article began as a series of four comments at Debunking Christianity in response to the second of a series of essays by a relatively new member named Joseph. Joseph is an ex-minister and counselor in a conservative Christian denomination who had found his…
aardvarchaeology | November 14, 2007My friendly colleague Claes Pettersson heads excavations in Jönköping, a town in Småland. His team is working with 17th-century urban layers in a part of town that was laid out and settled by royal decree starting in the 1620s. Here are his pics of a few cool finds.
A shard from a painted window.
Part of a sword hilt, decorated with sweet non-sword-wielding little putti. (This piece is going to be sooo pretty after conservation.)
A baker's mould depicting King Gustavus II Adolphus. In modern times, there has arisen a tradition to eat cake bearing the king's image on the anniversary of his…
aardvarchaeology | November 13, 2007A press release for you archaeoheads:
An award of $2000 is made to honor outstanding efforts to enhance public understanding of archaeology, in memory of Gene S. Stuart, a writer and managing editor of National Geographic Society books. The Award is given to the most interesting and responsible original story or series about any archaeological topic published in a newspaper or magazine with a circulation of at least 25,000. The award will be presented at the 2008 Society for American Archaeology Annual Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, March 28, 2008.
Past winners have included…
aardvarchaeology | November 12, 2007Need archaeological illustrations? Need someone to design your excavation report, PhD dissertation, tourist folder? Then check out my buddy Göran Werthwein's web site!
aardvarchaeology | November 12, 2007
As discussed here repeatedly before, the eastern coast of Sweden is in continual flux because of post-glacial shoreline displacement. Since the inland ice melted away and relieved its pressure on the land over 10 000 years ago, the dent made by the ice has been rebounding: first very quickly, then slower and slower. This land upheaval is however only half the explanation for where the shoreline has been at a certain time: the water level in the Baltic basin has also varied. This means that while the general trend has been for the shoreline to recede, there have been periods when it has stood…
aardvarchaeology | November 11, 2007
Welcome everybody to the Carnival of the Godless, a bi-weekly collection of good blogging from a perspective unclouded by notions of friendly guys in the sky who provide pie when you die.
Alexander the Atheist explains why both Christians and the god they worship
>need Satan.
Franklin's Journal tells us why
>Franklin is an optimist.
Austin at About.com gives us a run-down of the various ways in which religion, religious groups, and religious beliefs are privileged.
Aerik at The Science Ethicist relays three Kansan newspaper letters-page entries about atheism.
Greta Christina…
aardvarchaeology | November 10, 2007Evidence-based medicine, alternative medicine and weaponry change through time because of selection pressure. This means that they evolve and produce a fossil record of discontinued methods and therapies.
Any method or therapy introduced into alternative medicine will face selection pressure from two directions. If a method hurts patients to a visible extent, it will be recognised as weaponry and thrown out of altie medicine. Government regulations will forbid it and the more savvy altie practicioners will soon learn that it leads to nasty law suits.
If on the other hand a method introduced…
aardvarchaeology | November 9, 2007[More blog entries about swords, fencing, replica, weapons, reenactment, medieval; svärd, fäktning, vapen, medeltiden.]
Uppsala-based virtuoso weapon smith Peter Johnsson of Albion Swords Ltd has offered to make a replica of the Djurhamn sword. He also kindly allowed me to put some pix of his work on-line. Eye candy!
aardvarchaeology | November 8, 2007The twenty-seventh Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Sorting Out Science. Archaeology and anthropology, enough to turn you into a creature of the night, mad for love, with the fulfillment of your darkest desires your only goal in life.
The next open hosting slot is on 5 December. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me. No need to be an anthro pro -- come as you are. Come now!
aardvarchaeology | November 8, 2007Here's a novel way of identifying the erstwhile contents of an ancient pottery vessel: never mind the chemical composition of the residue, the lipids, the proteins, the isotope ratios, the pollen, the phytholiths, the seeds or the leaf fragments. Just scrape some gunk off the inside of the sherds and check it for DNA snippets to identify the organisms that produced it!
The beauty of this approach is that you will easily see if the DNA you've grabbed is likely to belong to the substance originally kept in the vessel. If you come up with your own DNA or that of a soil microbe or earthworm, then…
aardvarchaeology | November 6, 2007
History is the study of past societies through surviving text and images. I just got back home to Sweden, whose narrative history starts in the 9nd century AD and is even then really patchy for centuries. I have spent the past two weeks in China, where recorded history starts some time in the mid-2nd millennium BC. And what did I find in my long-neglected in-box when I got home? The makings of the 58th History Carnival!
A blog carnival, for those of you who don't already know, is an ambulatory and periodical collection of good blog writing relevant to a certain theme. Here today, somewhere…
aardvarchaeology | November 5, 2007Jean François Revel once wrote, "Let there be no discussion about methods except by those who make discoveries".
As may have become apparent at one time or another on this blog, I don't share a number of the ideals prevalent in current academic archaeology in Sweden. Post-modernism has become unfashionable, so my resistance to that movement is no longer very controversial. But my disdain for "theoretical archaeology" is still something that sets me apart from many university-based colleagues. Now, most archaeologists are not university-based, so my opinions are in fact in tune with the…
aardvarchaeology | October 30, 2007
Came to Luoyang in Henan province on the Yellow River by train yesterday morning, passing factories and quarries, fertile fields and homes cut into hillsides like hobbit homes. We were booked into the Yaxiang Jinling hotel, a high-rise in Luoyang's vast new area of airily spaced skyscrapers outside the old town. Such developments surround all major Chinese cities these days and give a strange impression, as if Manhattan had been stretched out to cover all of New York State, the intervals filled with car parks, lawns and expressways. The hotel has 23 floors, all decorated in a space-themed…
aardvarchaeology | October 26, 2007The twenty-sixth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at The Primate Diaries. Archaeology and anthropology to rusticate your masonry and bevel your edges until your mind dissolves in bliss.
The next open hosting slot is on 5 December. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me. No need to be an anthro pro -- come as you are.
aardvarchaeology | October 25, 2007Third day in Beijing, and I think my internal clock may finally have synched with local time. The past two nights have seen me spinning sleeplessly in bed in the small hours and finally reading Proust in the lobby. I padded around the hotel before four o'clock, listening to the snores of the night man, watching from the roof terrace as a night-shift demolition man in an excavator took down another low old house to build a shop or hotel for us, the tourists. A Hanoi-style temporary sidewalk restaurant had sprouted in our hutong lane near the Gulou bell tower. There was no sign left of it when…
aardvarchaeology | October 24, 2007Junior and I have gone to China to join wife & sis in Beijing. We're attending the wedding of two old workmates of my wife, a Swedish lady and a Chinese gentleman who met while working as guides in Stockholm city hall. After the festivities we're taking the train to the groom's home town of Luoyang in Henan. I'm really looking forward to the trip: I've never seen Beijing, I've never been to Henan and I've never attended a Chinese wedding. Though my quite non-revolutionary mom did hoist the red banner when my wife and I got hitched...
I don't know what kind of internet access I'll have…
aardvarchaeology | October 23, 2007
I've never understood the point of bars or night life. Most people seem to go to bars and night clubs to meet their friends, get drunk and possibly get laid. I don't drink, from a very early age I've been in steady relationships with vigorous women, I see my friends on-line or at our respective kitchen tables, and I get really sleepy around midnight. So night life has nothing to offer me.
I was once single for eight months, which meant that I did have to do something to get laid. But what took care of that certainly wasn't my exploration of clubs: I hooked up with women everywhere except in…
aardvarchaeology | October 22, 2007The Skepticality podcast and Skeptic Mag's web site (9-page PDF file) have picked up on something I wrote on 5 July 2006. Thus, to keep you in the know, Dear Reader, I've copied the entry to Aard as well.
Skepticism, for those of you who don't use the word fifteen times a day, means an unwillingness to believe anything without good reason. These days, it's also an international movement that can be seen as the antithesis of a) New Age, b) pseudoscience. Skeptics don't believe in herbal remedies, astrology, spiritism or self-improvement coaches. But they do believe in rational scientific…
aardvarchaeology | October 21, 2007Wednesday 24 October will see the Four Stone Hearth blog carnival appear in all its archaeo/anthro glory at The Primate Diaries. If you have read or blogged anything good on those themes lately, then make sure to submit it to Eric ASAP. (You are encouraged to submit stuff you've found on other people's blogs.)
There's an open hosting slot on 5 December and further ones closer to Christmas. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me.
aardvarchaeology | October 20, 2007Yesterday I received a large package by mail from Dear Reader Twoflower in New York. He'd asked me for my address, and I was expecting a book or an off-print, but the minute I saw the box I realised I had been wrong. Guess what he sent me.
Apparently, I have pained Twoflower by publishing ugly pics of nice finds and fieldwork here. I believe that specifically, this pic and this pic hurt his sense of archaeological aesthetics: a lovely new find, shot first with a spade for scale and then with an ugly folding rule. Well, Twoflower, you kind and generous man, thanks to you I will no longer have…