Martin Rundkvist
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
Posts by this author
My buddy Oscar doesn't like roughing it at gaming conventions, sleeping on classroom floors, eating cup noodles etc. So for two years now he's organised civilised boardgaming weekends where he's gotten a bunch of gamers together and booked a small hotel for us (here's about last year's). It's 48…
So yeah, Kickstarter now offers you the opportunity to back a card game set in a Lovecraftian girl school.
Via Kenneth Hite.
Blues & metal fans, take note. The album you need to get right now is Hisingen Blues by Swedish sensations Graveyard.
And check out the Aardvarchaeology Merchandise Store!
Friday was quite a day for me: wake up at 5 after a restless night, travel by air, give test lecture, get praised beyond belief, eat excellent mutton & cabbage, do very friendly interview, become optimistic, meet up with local skeptical buddy, return home. Then a metal gig headlined by…
UppÃ¥kra near Lund is Scandinavia's largest 1st millennium settlement site and may (for some definitions of "town") have been the first town north of Germany. Its finds are absolute top-quality and occur in vast numbers. For many object types, there are now more specimens from UppÃ¥kra only than…
Those free Nigerian scam t-shirts never materialised, but still, the affair prompted me to get some excellent merch art made and set up a web shop. A good thing about this is that now I can offer all three designs submitted by Jim Allen, Stacy Mason and Joe Hewitt!
Dear Reader, hie thee over to Ye…
I visited the Gothenburg Book Fair for the first time because of my new book. The Academy of Letters needed people to put on the Researcher's Square stage, and conveniently one of their staff had just published a book with them - me. When the local organiser saw me she did a double take because I…
The top official in charge of protecting and making accessible the archaeological record in Sweden is titled Riksantikvarie, "Antiquarian of the Realm". In English, this title is usually translated as "Custodian of Ancient Monuments". How should a person act in practice as custodian of ancient…
The Mesolithic is the period between deglaciation and the introduction of agriculture in Europe (up to about 4000 cal BC in my parts). Within Swedish research into this period in recent years, no single site has been able to compete with the small town of Motala in Ãstergötland county. Located at…
Bamse magazine is one of Sweden's most beloved childrens' publications, with a readership mainly about age 10. Its title character's name does mean "The Big One". But still, I must say that I was as surprised as Bamse himself and the squirrel when I saw what that troll is doing with such glee to…
Here's a quick look at the most recent windfall of popular archaeomags that has reached my big black mailbox. I've decided to terminate a few of the complimentary subscriptions, so these rundowns will be shorter and/or less frequent in the future. If you want, Dear Reader, you can check back at…
Came across this viper on a bike path one evening in July. It got shy when we stood around admiring it, so it disengaged from the shrew and slithered off into the greenery. May have saved it from getting run over by a bike.
Rode a funny plane to Visby: an ATR 72-500. It's a 1997 version of a French 1988 design with two propellers whose six blades curve rearwards. The rear undercarriage sits in bulky pods on the fuselage, right below the wings. Makes the plane look like it's got a beer gut. And its cargo bay is right…
My wife just returned from Beijing where she's been collecting interviews for a TV project. And I find that her beauty is not luxurious imagination.
Dear Reader, please try saying "ENSKTBLEH". Yes, six consonants in a row. ENSKTBLEH. OK? Now sing it, loudly and happily. Go!
I've spent three happy days at the first ever Picture Stone Symposium in Visby, listening to papers, moderating some bits and giving a presentation of my own that went down…
Those who want hard copy or are unwilling to wait six months for the free PDF can now order my Mead-halls book on-line for SEK 180 / U$D 27 / â¬20 / £17 plus postage.
When annoyed, my dad (born in '43) will sometimes use a pretty awesome expletive that has largely fallen out of fashion. Men då får han väl se till och ordna det då, för höge farao! "So he'd better make sure to get it done then, by the Great Pharaoh!"
This expression belongs to a common…
Dear Reader, help me interpret this odd situation.
It's 5:40 in the morning. I'm on my way to the commuter train. Passing the vacant lot of the closed school that burned in '06, I first see a van that stands with flat rear tyres backed into the leca gravel that covers the house foundation. It bears…
Rundkvist, Martin. 2011. Mead-halls of the Eastern Geats. Elite Settlements and Political Geography AD 375-1000 in OÌstergoÌtland, Sweden. Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien (KVHAA), Handlingar, Antikvariska serien 49. Stockholm 2011. 165 pp. ISBN 978-91-7402-405-0.
Abstract
The…
In 2009, geologist Nils Axel Mörner and Bob G. Lind (and a distinguished third author who was not consulted about having his name on the publication) had a paper published in Geografiska Annaler about the Ravlunda 169 cemetery. This was an outcome of the pair's unauthorised digging at the site in…
The t-shirt deal is starting to look like a Nigerian scam. The original offer was that I would get some free printed t-shirts from Ooshirts.com if I advertised about their site. Now have a load of this:
Do you have an American credit card? ... I know that you're getting the sponsorship amount off…
Scandinavian Bronze Age art features a number of motifs having to do with the movement of the sun through the heavens during the day and the underworld during the night. Here on Aard, we've previously seen a recently found sun-chariot rock carving, which most likely depicts a wheeled bronze model…
I'm a single dad now for two weeks while my wife's in China shooting interviews for a documentary series.
Aard's been getting a lot of comment spam lately, and the filter isn't working properly, so I've turned on comment moderation.
After digging in that cave I did four hours of metal detecting…
Few Swedish caves contain any known archaeology, and those that do mainly feature Mesolithic and Neolithic habitation layers. The Pukberget ("Devil's Mountain") cave near Enköping is a rare exception. In the mid-20th century a fox hunter crawled into the cave and felt his way around. His questing…
Feels like I've got a bit too much on my plate right now. Tonight's boardgame night, so I need to get everything packed up before dinner. "Pack up what?", I hear you say. Well, I'm spending the next couple of days digging & sieving test pits in a cave near Enköping where a Bronze Age spearhead…
Joseph Hewitt of Ataraxia Theatre is the artist who rendered almost the entire ScienceBlogs stable as zombies last summer. He has submitted the third t-shirt design, and when I saw it I thought, "Screw the reader's poll, this is the one I want!". So although I'd very proudly wear shirts with the…
Earlier this summer I did some upkeep on the board fence, pergola and yard gate of my house. Swapped some rotten boards and beams, put on some paint, whacked a few nails back in that had crept out. Easy work since I didn't have to design anything: I just measured the original parts and copied them…
All multicellular land species of life in Scandinavia are invasive: the area was covered by kilometres of ice until yesterday, geologically speaking. But some species are more recent invaders than others. Where I live, we currently have three species of large-bodied snail or slug: the Black slug (…