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
August 24, 2007
Almost half of Aard's Dear Readers are based in the US, nearly a fourth are in Sweden, and the remaining fourth is dominated by people in the UK, Canada and Australia. Alas, the citizens of my Scandy neighbouring countries show very little interest in the blog, and so I don't know if I have any…
August 23, 2007
Back in 1996 I played Curses, an extremely good text adventure game. I also read the inspiring documentation for Inform 3, the programming language Curses was written in, and found it extremely elegant. (The game, the programming language and its documentation were all the work of one Graham Nelson…
August 22, 2007
When someone dies their ID card and on-line banking code-dongle are destroyed to prevent identity theft. Their signature dies with them, so that's not a problem. In the past, people with a bit of money and influence had seal matrices filling the function of all these things. They "signed"…
August 21, 2007
Like myself, Martin Carver at Antiquity wants good archaeopix. Unlike me, he's offering a cash prize and publication in a top-tier print journal.
Antiquity would like to announce the Antiquity Photography Prize. This will be a cash prize awarded for the best archaeological photograph published in…
August 20, 2007
My friend Howard Williams teaches archaeology at the University of Exeter, England. He's joined me in Sweden three times so far, once for a rural bike trip, twice for co-directed excavations, and he's soon returning for yet another jaunt around the country's sites, museums and archaeology…
August 18, 2007
China's interest in the natural resources of Africa has ballooned lately and received much media coverage. Apparently, the last time somebody was that interested in metal ores and scrap, they were Germany in the late 1930s. This political force field across Africa is now, of course, being dressed…
August 17, 2007
I sometimes make reference here to how godless Swedish public discourse is, particularly compared to the fundie-infested US situation. Here's a good longer piece about this issue by Jerker (it's not a funny name in Swedish, being simply a dialectal version of Eric) of Allotetraploid, also partly…
August 17, 2007
I got to thinking about my most-prized possessions. Which are they really? Which of my stuff would I try to rescue if the house caught fire, or if we had to flee enemy troops and bring along or hide our valuables?
One way to look at it would be to simply enumerate the most expensive stuff I have,…
August 16, 2007
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
The original text adventure game, ADVENT, was written in the mid-1970s by Stanford student Will Crowther. This game begat Zork, then King's Quest, then any number of other adventure games on various computer platforms until the present day,…
August 15, 2007
The twentyfirst Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Archaeolog. Check it out! Archaeology and anthropology to make you squeal and titter with delight.
There's an open hosting slot on 26 September 10 October and further ones later in the fall. All bloggers with an interest in the subject…
August 15, 2007
Lund
Alsengems are little multilayered button-like discs of coloured glass with incised human stick-figures on one side. Archaeology became aware of them in 1871 when one was found on the Danish island of Als. These gems are pretty coarse and ugly compared to the exquisite agate and intaglio ones…
August 14, 2007
My dad tried out his new motorboat recently, going with my extra mom from Stockholm around Scania to Gothenburg and then across the country through the Göta Canal to Norrköping and back north to Stockholm again. Passing through Lake Roxen he sought out Sättuna in Kaga parish on the lake's SW shore…
August 13, 2007
The poet, philologist and bishop Esaias Tegnér (1782-1846) once wrote,
All bildning står på ofri grund till slutet
Blott barbariet var en gång fosterländskt
"All our learning must always stand on a slavish foundation
Barbarism is our single true heritage"
This was in the context of how nice Tegnér…
August 11, 2007
Wednesday 15 August will see the Four Stone Hearth blog carnival appear in all its archaeo/anthro glory at Archaeolog. If you have read or blogged anything good on those themes lately, then make sure to submit it to one of the blog editors ASAP. (You are encouraged to submit stuff you've found on…
August 11, 2007
Last night when I turned out the lights, something the size of a mouse jumped out of a lamp. We've had a bit of summer heat lately, and the balcony door has been open a lot. The creature turned out to be a wart-biter Great Green Bush-cricket female (Dectius verrucivorus Tettigonia viridissima),…
August 11, 2007
My kids have taken to watching LazyTown, this really druggy and garish kids' show on Playhouse Disney. It's got a lot of caricatured puppets of children with the hands of real people, but also three live actors, the main character played by a little girl in a pink wig. The live actors,…
August 10, 2007
Long-time Dear Readers may remember that I've written in the past about the wonderful Danish war booty sacrifices. Victorious defenders dunked the equipment of foreign armies they had beaten into sacred lakes, mainly during the Late Roman Iron Age c. AD 150-400. The lakes soon silted up into bogs…
August 9, 2007
Curious about what the Aard regulars look like? I am! If you consider yourself an Aardvarchaeology regular, then please gimme a pic of yourself and I'll put it into this gallery post. If you've got a pic on-line somewhere, just put a link to it in a comment. Otherwise, feel free to email me a pic.…
August 9, 2007
Here's a piece of news that hit uncomfortably close to home. A grave digger in Eslöv, southern Sweden, fell victim to a work-place accident yesterday. While the man was in the trench, the grave-side spoil dump collapsed onto him, killing him instantly. I am only somewhat reassured by the fact that…
August 8, 2007
Dear Reader,
Would you like to read about werewolf communes?
The beasties live quietly in southern California
Doing dirty work for the drugs trade
Sharing pack mentality, each with a queen bitch
Riding their vans to the desert's edge, changing
Into quadruped form and running long nights
Through…
August 7, 2007
I've spent the day metal-detecting for a project called Vasakungarnas Djurhamn, that is, "Animal Harbour of the Sheaf Kings". This name may not make much sense to you, Dear Reader, so let me explain.
In the 1520s Gustaf Eriksson, the most successful of many ambitious young noblemen at the time who…
August 6, 2007
[More blog entries about photography, geocaching, Sweden, sightseeing; nacka, foto, sightseeing, geocaching.]
After my daughter went to bed I took GPS navigator and camera and rode my bike out past the golf course and into the woods to look for a new geocache only 1.5 kms from my home. Took some…
August 4, 2007
Registration has opened for The Amazing Meeting 5.5, a skeptical conference in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida on 25-27 January 2008. The conference takes its name from skeptical godfather James (The Amazing) Randi, who will preside over the event together with Hal Bidlack. The theme of the meeting is…
August 3, 2007
As an archaeologist you get a funny perspective on time -- occupational hazard. For years I've been musing about what traces our era will leave to last into the far future. I've been thinking about six-lane highways with their cuttings through hills and their earthen banks across depressions. In my…
August 2, 2007
On-line Open Access "journals" and e-text repositories are very nice, but archaeology doesn't have any big or commonly used ones yet. This may be about to change with the Italian site Journal of Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Archaeology.
At the moment, much of the site is in Italian. Full-…
August 1, 2007
The twentieth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Afarensis. Check it out! Archaeology and anthropology to put a spring in your step and a glint in your eye.
August 1, 2007
Recent discoveries by my friend Lars got me thinking about New Age archaeology. The Mid-summer hippie/druid vs. police battles for Stonehenge are legendary. A few years ago I was given a guided tour of the Salisbury Plain's finest sites by my charming scholar friend Rebecca Montague. Entering the…
July 31, 2007
[More blog entries about archaeology, Mesolithic, Sweden; arkeologi, mesolitikum, jägarstenåldern, Stockholm.]
My old buddy from undergrad days, hard-core Mesolithic scholar, painter and woodsman Mattias Pettersson, sent me a pair of wonderful breathless letters on 19 and 21 July about new high-end…
July 30, 2007
I've been largely oblivious to the emo movement in music and youth culture, but being a pop music fan I feel I should find out a little about this recent mass-market outgrowth of the hardcore punk scene. Opportunity struck in the most recent issue of kids' mag Kamratposten left on the john by my 9…
July 29, 2007
Wednesday 1 August the will see the Four Stone Hearth blog carnival appear in all its archaeo/anthro glory at Afarensis. If you have read or blogged anything good on those themes lately, then make sure to submit it to the proprietor ASAP. (You are encouraged to submit stuff you've found on other…