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 | April 24, 2007
[More blog entries about archaeology, Sweden, vikingperiod, vikings, gaming, amber; arkeologi, vikingar, vikingatiden, Småland, spel, bärnsten]
As told here before, in 2005 I was lucky enough to take part in unearthing the first set of amber gaming pieces to surface in Sweden for over a century. They were in a boat inhumation burial at Skamby in Östergötland. I believed that only one such set had been found before in Sweden, by Hjalmar Stolpe in the late 19th century when he excavated the cemeteries of Birka. The Birka grave in question (Bj 524) is a weapon inhumation with a silver coin…
aardvarchaeology | April 23, 2007As reported here before, a month from now there's an interesting symposium in Estonia under the heading Rank, gender and society around the Baltic 400-1400 AD. I'm not going, but for those interested I append the list of participants and papers below the fold. I like to know a little about who's doing what in my field.
(Dear Baltic colleagues, sorry for messing your diacritic characters up.)
Dr Mindaugas Bertasius (Kaunas Univarsity of Technology, Department of Cultural Science) - "Archaeological resource about rank system and early Lithuanian state"
PhD student Laurynas Kurila (Lithuanian…
aardvarchaeology | April 22, 2007For a few weeks, I've been slowly, slowly learning my way around the Open Source operating system Ubuntu Linux. Lots of things work just fine. Indeed, they work incredibly well considering that I downloaded an entire operating system with office software for free from the net. But every now and then I run into things that force me to boot Windows XP or lower my expectations. They may be fully possible to do in Ubuntu, though too complicated for me to accomplish at my current level of ignorance; or semi-possible to do in Ubuntu through an ugly kludge that's not worth it; or they may simply be…
aardvarchaeology | April 21, 2007Ubuntu Linux is a free Open Source operating system with office software, intended to empower the Third World by freeing it from dependence on Western software companies. It shares its name with a humanist ideology promoted by people such as Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. The software is also popular in the West, where most of the development takes place and where most of the installations running it are likely located. The project's Swedish homepage prominently features a fine piece of inadvertent colonial condescension. It's actually quite heartwarmingly naïve in its complete lack of…
aardvarchaeology | April 20, 2007Browsing through the reviews section of the current issue of Antiquity, I came across a confusing and irritating piece (behind a paywall) by one Dr. Charlotte Whiting. She works for the Council for British research in the Levant and is based in Amman in Jordan. Her review article treats three recent books on the Iron Age of the southern Levant, in other words, what is commonly known as Biblical archaeology. Though I entered archaeology as a shovel grunt on Tel Hazor in the Galilee, I know very little of this subject. I have read none of the books Whiting discusses; my complaint isn't about…
aardvarchaeology | April 19, 2007Last week an anthology I've edited was delivered from the printers.
Scholarly Journals Between the Past and the Future. The Fornvännen Centenary Round-Table Seminar. Stockholm, 21 April 2006. Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, Konferenser 65. Stockholm 2007. 109 pp. ISBN 978-91-7402-368-8.
On 21 April 2006 a round-table seminar took place on the premises of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities in Stockholm. The occasion was Fornvännen's centenary, and the theme was the current status and future prospects of such scholarly journals.
This volume…
aardvarchaeology | April 19, 2007Many senior Swedish archaeologists are afraid of metal detectors and uncomfortable with the idea that the public might have access to such machines. Likewise with information about the locations, or even the existence, of newly made metal detector finds. "Keep it quiet or you'll attract looters."
To some extent I agree: telling the press you have discovered a ploughed-out silver coin hoard before you're reasonably sure you have collected everything you can of it would just be stupid. But as often shown in my blogging, I don't agree when it comes to copper-alloy finds. In fact, I favour easing…
aardvarchaeology | April 18, 2007
As reported here before, the Medieval church of Älvestad in Östergötland, Sweden, burned down on 29 March. On 12 April I visited the site and took some pix. I was somewhat heartened to see that what has been destroyed was largely a product of radical 18th century re-building. The remaining 12th century masonry is confined to the tower which is the least damaged part of the church after the fire. The spire and the bells have collapsed into the tower, but it still looks structurally sound.
More pix below the fold.
[More blog entries about church, fire, Sweden, Medieval; kyrka, brand,…
aardvarchaeology | April 17, 2007
This entry was first published over the cell-phone network on my old site, without pix, on Friday 13 April.
I write this sitting on a rock outcrop just east of the great barrow of Disevid in Heda parish. It brandishes four great old oaks at me as it sits across a little marsh with a small stream running through. Sunshine, lark song, some wind and the low growl of a diesel motor in the distance.
Theres Grönqvist is on my detector today, and with few finds there is little for me to slap GPS coordinates on. The barrow is one of the largest in the province and undated, which is why we are here.…
aardvarchaeology | April 17, 2007
This entry was first published over the cell-phone network on my old site, without pix, on Thursday 12 April.
This morning we wrapped up our 20 person-hours in Varv, joined by regular Dear Reader Lars Lundqvist. The weather was great, but we found nothing older than the 11th century. A fragment of interlace-decorated jewellery with the openings between the tendrils marked crudely by round holes reminds me of Urnes brooches of c. AD 1100. A pear-shaped pendant with an obliguely hatched cuff feels vaguely like it might be a piece of High Medieval dress ornament. Together they may mark the spot…
aardvarchaeology | April 17, 2007
This entry was first published over the cell-phone network on my old site, without pix, on Wednesday 11 April.
This has been a stressful but fun day: I have spent most of it talking to the mainstream media. You see, I forgot to tell you yesterday that somehow regional radio had heard of the foil-figure model find I blogged about Monday, and a lady came out to site and interviewed me and Niklas. This morning it was a big radio news story. And so the other Östergötland media jumped onto the bandwagon: two TV stations and one newspaper hunted us down to look at the find, one newspaper…
aardvarchaeology | April 17, 2007
Very timely with the discovery of the Kaga foil-figure model, my buddy Ing-Marie Back Danielsson has published her PhD thesis in archaeology, Masking Moments. The transitions of bodies and beings in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (available on-line). There's a picture of a foil-figure or other late-1st Millennium human representation on almost every page. The viva is on Thursday Friday 20 April in Stockholm, and the opponent none other than that enfant terrible of the British Neolithic, Julian Thomas. Reading his fine 1991 book Rethinking the Neolithic, I remember wondering if there is anything…
aardvarchaeology | April 16, 2007
This entry was first published over the cell-phone network on my old site, without pix, on Tuesday 10 April.
Our Kaga site was very good to us today as well. 26 person-hours of metal detecting, six 1st Millennium brooches: four small equal-armed of the later 6th century, one disc-shaped with inlay socket of the 6/7th century, and part of a 5th century large equal-armed relief brooch. The latter has non-animal-art decoration in the Nydam style, a rare and exclusive piece of jewellery, fits nicely with the foil figure model. Also a High Medieval annular brooch. I'm crap at metal detecting:…
aardvarchaeology | April 15, 2007Another one of my favourite podcasts hits 100 instalments: the R.U. Sirius show. It's cyber-counterculture talk radio with ample references to sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, but done in a geeky, distinctly literate manner. R.U. Sirius himself used to be the editor of seminal cyber-mag Mondo 2000 back in the day, and is now an elder statesman on the trippy fringe of technology. By his own admission, he likes to spend a Sunday afternoon reading a thick book while stoned, and him and his posse of witty co-chatterers are a delight to hear.
Among recent guests on the show we find security expert…
aardvarchaeology | April 13, 2007
This entry was first published over the cell-phone network on my old site, without pix, on Monday 9 April.
This morning I woke up in an unexpected and not very welcome winter wonderland. Driving the 2.5 hours to Linköping on summer tyres was scary. But the snow was gone by lunch. An icy wind persisted.
I'm writing this from the kitchen of a little house we're renting at the hostel in Mjölby. Today my crew of six did 27 person-hours of metal detecting at our site in Kaga parish, collecting about a hundred objects, most dating from the past three centuries. Only one can be dated before AD 1100…
aardvarchaeology | April 12, 2007
A Dear Reader who calls themself Ophistokont made me curious about what this intriguing word might mean. It's very rare, with only seven Google hits and no entry in Merriam-Webster. Ophi- should have to do with snakes. -stok- calls stoichiometry to mind, having to do with elements. -ont has to do with being. Something that forms the basic element of a snake-like thing, maybe?
I didn't make that up unaided. Those seven Google hits explain (mostly in German) that an ophistokont is the end of a single-cell being from which its motile flagellum extends. These little whip-like outboard motors…
aardvarchaeology | April 10, 2007I've run Firefox 2.0 under three different operating systems on several machines. And every time I start this otherwise excellent program after re-booting, it gives me the following error message"Your last Firefox session closed unexpectedly. You can restore the tabs and windows from your previous session, or start a new session if you think the problem was related to a page you were viewing."
My method of turning the thing off is in fact uncontroversial: I just click the "close window" button top right. So why does it consistently give me this buggy message? I don't know. Maybe it's because…
aardvarchaeology | April 9, 2007This week I'm doing fieldwork in Östergötland with friends, colleagues and Aard regulars from the Gothenburg Historical Society, the County Museum and the State Excavation Unit. We're continuing our metal detecting campaign from last spring, returning to the sites in Kaga and Hagebyhöga, and having a look at four new ones in Heda, Varv, Askeby and Östra Husby. Our objective is to find aristocratic farmstead sites of the period AD 400-1000. Swedish State Broadcasting's science show for kids, Hjärnkontoret, will pay us a visit.
One thing I miss since moving to ScienceBlogs is the ability to…
aardvarchaeology | April 8, 2007
One of my favourite podcasts, Escape Pod, currently offers its one hundredth weekly show. Congratulations Steve & Co, that is so impressive! I've listened to almost every one of the shows, offering excellent short stories in the science fiction and fantasy genres. Number 100 is Isaac Asimov's classic "Nightfall". And it's not just about the stories: Steve Eley's intros and outros are always a treat to hear. Dear Reader, check out Escape Pod's web site and have a listen. It's free, and donations are voluntary. Highly recommended!
aardvarchaeology | April 7, 2007I've made a long-overdue update to my psych-music web page. Have a look, lots of album recommendations! And I'm aware of new releases for myself to check out from the M Coast, Mars Volta, Minders and Of Montreal, so I guess I'll be adding more stuff shortly.