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
September 17, 2009
In a somewhat less subculture-savvy move, an Internet service provider in Gothenburg has chosen to call itself GothNet. Nothing on their web site suggests that they have any inkling what "Goth" means to most English-speaking people today.
The etymology is complicated. First there was a bunch of…
September 15, 2009
Here's a piece of fragmentology. In the 19th century a brooch (inset) was found at Vistena in Allhelgona parish, Ãstergötland. It's a copper-alloy piece decorated with embossed silver sheet panels in the Nydam style, approx. AD 375-450. In 2008 a member of my metal detector team found part of a…
September 14, 2009
Yesterday I joined my friend Dendro-Ãke, his cousin and their charming wives to check out an example of an old exotic building technique near my home. On Skutudden Point near Baggensstäket (an area I keep writing about, it's just full of history) are a number of little 19th century buildings…
September 13, 2009
Dear Reader, if you are in the Netherlands, in England or in Finland and you either a) want to meet me, or b) want to avoid meeting me, I have some important information for you. I am planning to visit those countries over the coming seven weeks. Beware or drop me a line. You have been warned/…
September 13, 2009
My wife and I made a short mushrooming excursion to Lake Lundsjön after lunch. Little more than half an hour in the woods garnered us only four species, but huge amounts of one: velvet bolete. We went home early simply because we didn't need more mushrooms. I'm stewing them with cream. Never had…
September 11, 2009
On my way to the Library of the Academy of Letters today I spied something unusual. Somebody on the second floor of Storgatan 30 is having pigeon trouble. They've studded the window ledge with nails and stuck a plastic owl to the front of the house.
Those owls are pretty popular. My mom once found…
September 10, 2009
I never was much of a game console nut. My video game crazes mostly played out on the PC. But I did play the Atari in the 70s, the C64 in the 80s and the NES and SNES in the early 90s, when I wrote for Nintendo mags and borrowed the hardware from my employers. The SNES was the last console I paid…
September 9, 2009
The seventy-fifth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Ad hominin. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. The next vacant…
September 9, 2009
When I left my PhD student office at the Museum of National Antiquities I rescued a couple of angel wing begonias. One has recently been joined in its pot by spontaneously appearing yellow fungus. Today four sizeable mushrooms popped up! And Dear Reader William identified them: they're Yellow…
September 8, 2009
My friend Tor reports, "Complete Heyting algebras are a central object of study in pointless topology".
September 8, 2009
Back in April of 2008 I mused that strictly chronologically speaking, at 36 I was already a mid-career academic since I started working at 20 and retirement age is currently 65. I'm still years from the age when people get academic jobs in my discipline, 41, but anyway.
Yesterday I had two…
September 7, 2009
Yesterday I had a clear illustration of how the brain determines the direction of a noise. I was listening to a podcast in ear buds when my wife asked me something. I took one bud out and talked to her for a while as the podcast continued to chatter in my left ear. Then the cordless phone rang. And…
September 7, 2009
The 75th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at Ad hominin on Wednesday. Submit your best recent stuff to Ciarán. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!
The carnival needs hosts. The next open slot is on 7 October 23 September. Drop me a line!
September 6, 2009
Played the new German board game Finca that my friend Eddie the heathen goldsmith brought along. It's an abstract system lightly dressed up in a story about harvesting and distributing fruit and greens on Mallorca of all things. Good fun though! Then we played Blokus, always fun too.
Took a sunny…
September 4, 2009
Visa större karta
Here are two pieces of convoluted Scandy and English etymology that converge in my head.
"Marshmallow" was originally the common name of a plant, Althaea officinalis (Sw. läkemalva), from which a thickening agent was made. This agent was added to meringue foam to produce the…
September 3, 2009
The Sb Overloards have a poll up to learn what y'all think about the upcoming Sb on-line forum reform.
September 3, 2009
So I spent the day on GÃ¥lö, happily digging & sieving a square meter on a Middle Neolithic shore site 25 meters above current sea level that my friend Roger found two years ago. I haven't dug that period since 1993 when I spent almost the entire fieldwork season on the classic Bollbacken…
September 2, 2009
The 6th Aardvarchaeology blogmeet was a friendly three-hour affair with good food, good drink and good company. 'Twas me, Kai, MÃ¥rten, Per G, Sigmund, Thinker and Tor, and an excellent time was had at Akkurat.
Here's the historical record of blogmeets past. The archaeological record is, due to…
September 2, 2009
People in the Lake Mälaren area were on to Neolithisation immediately, with agriculture and stock breeding and pottery and sedentary life, when the package became available around 4000 cal BC. But then they said "oh, screw it" and spent most of the the Middle Neolithic as seal hunters and fishers…
September 2, 2009
On the commuter train the other day I suddenly realised that I was seeing three rather prim middle-aged middle-class people reading novels, and that all three were genre fiction.
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Douglas Adams 1980. (science fiction)
The Man in the High Castle. Philip K.…
September 1, 2009
This past Sunday the Department of Archaeology at the University of Lund organised a public debate about creationism and archaeology. One of the invited speakers was Young Earth creationist Mats Molén, who should not in my opinion have been lent academic credibility in that manner. Universities…
August 31, 2009
Logged four geocaches. One helped me discover a huge vestigial highway overpass. Highway 222 was built in the early '70s, and at one spot west of Nacka high school the road engineers thought that they might one day want to build a four-lane highway crossing the new one. They haven't so far. I rode…
August 29, 2009
Stacy L. Mason is an Aard regular and a talented artist. Check out his awesome interpretation of the Swedish tardigrades that are going to Phobos!
In other news, I have issues with the lyrics of the Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas podcast's theme song, a fine ska tune by 7 Seconds of Love.
I'm gonna flip…
August 29, 2009
Phobos-Grunt ("soil") is a planned Russian sample return mission to the Martian moon Phobos. It may launch in less than two months. On board will among other things be the L.I.F.E. experiment, a small canister full of hardy micro organisms, designed by the US Planetary Society. If all goes well,…
August 27, 2009
Quoth Overlord Erin,
In the next three to four weeks, we'll be creating and unveiling a user registration program ... This will allow users to sign in, create a profile, track discussions they're interested in, customize their content, and interact with one another directly. We will also be…
August 27, 2009
I'm writing this on the train home from Lidköping on Lake Vänern in Västergötland province. I've spent a pleasant day discussing an interesting fieldwork project with colleagues. Gothenburg PhD student dynamic duo Anneli Nitenberg and Anna Nyqvist Thorsson have been working for years on the…
August 26, 2009
The seventy-fourth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Natures/Cultures. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. The next…
August 25, 2009
From Aard regular CCBC, a heritage management conundrum to ponder.
This is a curious situation that I heard about on metafilter.com. I have included some of the links.
Near Kaufdorf, Switzerland there is an auto junkyard that was in use from the 1930s to 1970. It has become overgrown with various…
August 24, 2009
The 74th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at Natures/Cultures tomorrow, Wednesday. Submit your best recent stuff to Adam. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!
August 24, 2009
[More blog entries about Sweden, photography, manor; Närke, Askersund, foto, herrgård.]
My part-time employers, the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, sometimes receive rather hefty donations. This is how they came to own Stjernsund manor near Askersund in the province of Närke / Nericia. (Don…