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.
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Posts by this author
Today I didn't make any effort to entertain the kids until mid-afternoon. I was busy filling in some gaps and writing the last piece of text for my Ãstergötland manuscript, an entry for the gazetter at the end of the book. It's been my main project for almost four years. What remains now is…
In the West we shake our heads, and very rightly so in my opinion, at sharia, Islamic law rooted in the culture of 7th century AD Arabia. This is the body of thought that leads to judicial stonings and mutilations to this day.
The legislative assemblies of Ireland and Lithuania, each just a short…
The seventy-first Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Neuroanthropology. 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. No need…
Courtesy of my niece-in-law in Hangzhou, here's a piece of plastic hong shao rou, ç´çè, red braised pork, intended as a cell phone decoration. Yum!
In early May (I was <this> close to capitalising "Early" because I write about archaeological periods all the time.) metal detectorists on Bornholm, Denmark, rediscovered one of the earliest-documented find spots of guldgubbar. These are tiny embossed gold foils depicting people: usually a…
The 72nd Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at Neuroanthropology tomorrow, Wednesday. Submit your best recent stuff to Greg. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!
I'm now in that state of summer leisure mixed with the responsibility of providing entertainment for the kids that causes a man to forget what day it is of the week. And so a week's fun is no longer restricted to its last two days. But I have done nothing grandiose lately: mainly pottered about…
Lurker:
"In Internet culture, a lurker is a person who reads discussions on a message board, newsgroup, chatroom, file sharing or other interactive system, but rarely or never participates actively."
From this follows that a de-lurk is an opportunity for shy regular readers to make their presence…
KÃ¥reholm manor on the Slätbaken inlet in Ãstergötland, home of my friends the Danielsson family.
In the 1950s there was a company (maybe several?) in Sweden whose business was to fly around rural areas and take aerial photographs of farms, mills, churches and small factories. Employees in pilot…
Saturday me and the kids went on an unusual package tour. First we took the 1903 steam ship Mariefred from Stockholm to Mariefred, and got to visit the engine room while the machine was working. Mariefred is a small town on Lake Mälaren whose name preserves that of Pax Mariae, one of the last…
Today is my last day as a daycare customer, provided that my views on having a third child don't change radically one day. I've enjoyed the fine service of the Igelboda daycare centre for six or seven years straight, but come autumn, Juniorette will become a 0th grade schoolgirl. She's not yet six…
The seventieth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Afarensis. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. The next open hosting slot is on 12 August. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to…
Dear Reader Tom Stinnett alerted me to a really doom-laden article about Sweden in yesterday's Guardian. Says Ruben Andersson (apparently a Swedish expat and anthropologist),
Sweden's conservative coalition government has stood still as the financial crisis has engulfed the country. Jobs, social…
I really like the spam letters I get with the subject line "Hello Dear". Sometimes the spammer is even named Hello Dear. Here's the latest example.
Hello dear
how are you today i hope that every things is OK with you as is my pleasure to contact you after viewing your profile which really interest…
The Rundkvist family's aging computer collection is in a sad state.
Our newest machine is also the only one that's still working flawlessly. A little 2008 LG netbook, it runs Win XP and Ubuntu linux and is mainly used by Junior as a gaming machine. When travelling, my wife and I like to bring it…
Afarensis left to go solo, but starting today we can instead enjoy the evolutionary anthro goodness of The Primate Diaries right here on Sb! Pop on over and give Eric some of that bonobo group-cohesion-reinforcing lovin'.
An idle thought struck me. Let's say you're on the latitude of Northern Europe and you've become a locavore, someone who avoids foodstuffs that must be transported far from their production site. Let's also say that you don't like greenhouses. And finally, let's say you're hooked on coffee or tea.…
Current Archaeology's July issue offers a lot of good reading, of which I particularly like the stories on human origins (see below) and garden archaeology at Kenilworth Castle. But I have two complaints.
First point of criticism. The editors of CA have this weird habit of doing "media tie-ins"…
The 71th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at Afarensis on Wednesday. Submit your best recent stuff to the bloggin' australopithecine. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!
It's been one of the warmest and sunniest weeks in a long time. Saturday I invited friends old and new over: we played a game of Tigris & Euphrates, two games of kubb (no, it is not an old Viking game), made a lovely barbecue dinner and took an evening walk to Lake Lundsjön. Our kubb court was…
As you may know, Dear Reader, this blog can be perused selectively by theme if you click "Archives" in the menu bar up top. For a long time I've been tagging entries straying from the blog's main themes "NOIBN", Not Otherwise Indicated By Name. But realising recently that there were almost a…
Swedish island-province Ãland's second-largest silver hoard ever was found recently. Dating from the 11th century and consisting mainly of about 1000 German and English coins, it also has some Islamic ones, one from Sigtuna and even one from India, a very rare occurrence. Some hack silver as well…
Strong black tea is my drug of choice. But I got fed up with caffeine addiction a few years back and started to limit my intake. Currently I'm at 1.5 litres every second day, which means that my system is used to going without caffeine for over 40 hours at a time -- counted from afternoon tea on a…
If president Sarkozy really believes that Muslim women are subservient to male members of their families, then he shouldn't try to regulate their clothing. He should draw the full consequences of his beliefs and forbid Muslim women to vote in French elections. If, on the other hand, he believes…
I'm finishing writing a book and you guys will have the opportunity to review the manuscript some time towards late summer. The working title is Mead-halls of the Eastern Geats. Elite Settlements and Political Geography AD 375-1000 in Ãstergötland, Sweden.
The title alludes to the Old English epic…
Dendrochronology is the study of tree-rings to determine when and where a tree has grown. Everybody knows that trees produce one ring every year. But the rings also vary in width according to each year's local weather conditions. If you've got enough rings in a wood sample, then their widths form…
The Rundkvist family right before we went in and apprehended the extraterrestrial. Photo F. Gilljam.
Friday was Mid-summer's Eve. Cycled with the kids to the local maypole celebration. Back home, I assembled the first barbecue I've ever owned and made some really nice souvlaki for our guests.…
The Swedish Humanist Association is currently running our version of the Atheist Bus Campaign in the Stockholm subway. Gud finns nog inte -- "God probably doesn't exist". It may seem a little gratuitous in a country where few people are religious any more, but the ads make the point that there's a…
Here's a cool thing from my buddy Claes Pettersson at Jönköping County Museum. He's been directing big excavations of the town's 17th century industrial precinct, and his team has found something that appears to be a forged gold coin. It consists of a soft grey metal (tin?) with a thin coating…