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
July 29, 2007
From Pär Svensson of Kurtz, this fine portrait of a red river hog, Potamochoerus porcus, in Berlin's zoo. These cool-looking omnivores make their home in sub-Saharan Africa.
From the same recent zoo visit, our cerebal rock guitarist provides us with a peek at the nocturnal fellows who give this…
July 28, 2007
Our local newspaper Nacka-Värmdö-Posten for 24 July has an item by Evelina Stucki that I would be remiss to keep from you, Dear Reader (and I translate).
"Last summer, three Värmdö girls went to Brighton in Great Britain. Before leaving, they had tried to contact their host family, but the phone…
July 27, 2007
I've run into an interesting ethical conundrum involving Molluscum contagiosum. It's a viral infection common among kids, where a pox-family virus causes little pale warts that usually remain from six to nine months. Once the last lesion is gone you seem to become resistant, and the complaint is…
July 26, 2007
A weakness of mine is that the memories of a few embarrassing events in my past sometimes come back to haunt me and make me cringe with self-loathing. Very likely, I am the only person in the world who ever thinks of (or even remembers) these events, but I just can't help feeling bad about them.…
July 25, 2007
Back in January I ran a Greatest Hits roundup for my pre-Aard blog site. Now Razib has taught me how to check which Aard entries are the most-read ones via Google Analytics. Many are of course carnivals, and the rest are heavily influenced by who has linked to them, but anyway: here are the ten…
July 23, 2007
In today's paper issue of main Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter is a news item headlined "Hobby Researcher Gives New Signs to Stones" (currently not available on-line, but here's another relevant piece). It relays a few statements from museologist Ewa Bergdahl of the Swedish National Heritage Board…
July 23, 2007
As discussed here in a recent entry, there has long been a conflict over Ales stenar, a prehistoric stone ship monument in Scania, southern Sweden. Scholarship has argued that like all other large stone ships in southern Scandinavia with ample space between the standing stones, Ales stenar was…
July 21, 2007
"Damn ye, Gods!" Photo by Pär Svensson / Kurtz.
Welcome everyone to Aardvarchaeology and the 71st Carnival of the Godless! The carnival is a bi-weekly roundup of godless blogging from around the net. Aardvarchaeology is mainly about Scandinavian archaeology and various skeptical issues, but I…
July 20, 2007
A large and varied 10th century silver hoard of typical Scandinavian character with international components has been found at Harrogate in Yorkshire. Amateur metal detectorists made the find and immediately notified the authorities.
Thanks to Tim at Walking the Berkshires and Jeff Lanam for the…
July 19, 2007
For years and years, there has been an on-going conflict over Ales stenar, a prehistoric stone ship monument in Scania, southern Sweden. Scholarship has argued that like all other large stone ships in southern Scandinavia with ample space between the standing stones, Ales stenar was built as a…
July 19, 2007
Some time around the turn of the millennium a friend gave me a cactus. It's been sitting happily in its pot ever since, proliferating into a cluster of green phalli until it was clearly too big for the pot. Yesterday I relented and transplanted it to a larger one. This involved a few arcane steps…
July 18, 2007
From that soft-spoken friend of all Sweden's little idiosyncracies, Paddy K, a fresh cell phone snapshot of Kilnaughton abbey in Tarbert, County Kerry, south-west Ireland. The ruins are 600 years old and the site is still in use as a cemetery: among other illustrious lineages, the K clan has a…
July 18, 2007
Over at my buddy Frans-Arne's blog Arkeologi i Nord I found a great quotation from Norwegian archaeologist and anti-Nazi politician Anton Wilhelm Brøgger (1884-1951):
"Det vi vet er så uendelig lite mot det som er hendt. Arkeologen er som den som går langs en strand og finner småtterier, skyllet i…
July 18, 2007
People have been everywhere on Earth and whatever they did originally in a certain spot rarely continues into the present. The Swedish legal definition of an archaeological site is that it should contain remains of people's activities in the past that have become permanently discontinued. This…
July 17, 2007
Yesterday at the beach, Charles Stross's 2005 novel Accelerando in hand, I introduced my dear friend, the Aard lurker and professional logician Tor, to the concept of Singularity. Explains Wikipedia:
The Technological Singularity is the hypothesized creation, usually via AI or brain-computer…
July 16, 2007
Orac mentioned that he runs recurring De-Lurking Days on his blog. "Lurking" is to hang around a web forum or a blog without making your presence known. "De-Lurking" is to come out into the light of on-line day, however briefly.
Aard currently has about a hundred visits by returning readers every…
July 16, 2007
Without much fanfare, the Department of Archaeology in Lund continues its excavations at the insanely large and wealthy 1st Millennium settlement at Uppåkra parish church outside Lund. This place was clearly a royal seat and the finds are unbelievably rich both in number and quality. A week-by-…
July 15, 2007
Last night to Tantogården in Stockholm, an outdoor concert venue a stone's throw from the hospital where my son was born, to hear Pugh Rogefeldt. As the long-term Dear Reader may remember, Mr Rogefeldt released Ja dä ä dä, one of the first and still among the very best Swedish psychedelic rock…
July 14, 2007
Starting in 2004, the Department for Zionist Activities of the World Zionist Organization has given the annual Herzl Awards to "outstanding young men and women in recognition of their exceptional efforts on behalf of Israel and the Zionist cause". One of the prize-winners for 2006 is Swedish 26-y-o…
July 13, 2007
That Myers character has snared me in his net again. Did I say Myers? Sorry, M e i e r. Sid Meier. The Civilization guy.
It's been years since I spent any significant amount of time on computer games. The other day, however, I picked up a copy of the 2005 hit Civilization IV cheaply on eBay, and…
July 12, 2007
As mentioned here before, Stockholm osteology professor Ebba During died in May. Her colleagues have now sent me an appreciation as a guest entry.
[More blog entries about archaeology, obit, obituary, Sweden, osteology, ebbaduring; arkeologi, dödsruna, osteologi, ebbaduring]
In Loving Memory of…
July 11, 2007
Alun at Clioaudio has done an excellent job of tracking down good archaeo & anthro material for the 18th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival.
The 19th 4SH will appear at Sherd Nerd on Wednesday 18 July. Submit good stuff (your own or somebody else's) to Amanda.
Bloggers with archaeo and anthro…
July 11, 2007
Here's something for my fellow burial aficionados to ponder. The news item's headline is overstated ("Woman Grieved for Seven Years at Empty Grave"), but the actual occurrence is kind of interesting.
A Gothenburg woman grieved for seven years at her mother's grave, but the urn with the mother's…
July 11, 2007
Last Saturday morning an armed robbery was attempted at the Nacka Forum mall not far from where I live. Two masked robbers went in just as staff were arriving to work, dragged a woman into her workplace, gaffer-taped her to a chair and demanded that she turn off the alarm and tell them when her co-…
July 10, 2007
[More blog entries about archaeology, Belgium, Merovingian, burial; arkeologi, Belgien, folkvandringstiden, vendeltiden, gravar.]
Belgian Dear Reader Bruno is one of the astronomy buffs behind Blog Wega (in Dutch). A piece about Bruno's nearest archaeological site wouldn't fit that blog, but I'm…
July 10, 2007
I've embarked on three weeks of summertime solo fatherhood as my wife works for a cookery mag in town. Today I sent the kids and their friends out to the overcast playground for an hour, listened to the Pixies and re-boxed my computer odds-and-ends, discovering innumerable useful cables and…
July 9, 2007
Dave over at The World's Fair is asking a few questions about interdisciplinary envy. Do biologists wish they were physicists? Or do physicists dream of biology? And what about archaeologists?
1. What's your current scientific specialty?
I'm an archaeologist specialising in Scandinavian Prehistory…
July 8, 2007
Lately I have come to think of books as computer devices, combining the functions of screen and backup medium. All texts these days are written and type-set on computers, so the paper thingy has long been a secondary manifestation of the text. People like publisher Jason Epstein and book blogger…
July 7, 2007
Antony Moore's novel The Swap is set in southern England in 2006 and revolves around a school reunion of people born in 1970. It's a murder mystery and a love story, a humorous tale about being startled out of complacency and boredom by unexpected events, about letting go of your past and moving on…