Denmark

Yeah, Screw You Too, Academia

aardvarchaeology — Fri, 29 Sep 2017 06:27:20 +0000

Yeah, Screw You Too, Academia

I recently received a long-awaited verdict on an official complaint I had filed: there was in fact nothing formally wrong with the decision by the Dept of Historical Studies in Gothenburg to hire Zeppo Begonia. Since the verdict didn't go my way, as planned I am now turning my back on academic archaeology. The reason is that qualifications don't count in Scandyland.

Being friends with people inside, and preferably being a local product, is what gets you academic jobs here. I need to cut my losses and move on. I would call this post a burning of bridges if there were any to burn, but there are none. Fourteen years on this joke of a job “market” have demonstrated that it doesn't matter whom I piss off now: there won't be a steady job for me either way.

I've been applying for academic jobs all over Scandinavia since 2003. The longest employment I've been able to secure was a 6-month temp lectureship at 55% of full time – during one of three happy years when I headed freshman archaeology in remote Umeå. But time and time again, I've seen jobs given to dramatically less qualified colleagues.

Norwegian university recruitment is particularly ugly. There, rules stipulate that the “external” hiring committee has to be chaired by a senior faculty member from the hiring department itself – with predictable results. The most egregious case I've seen was not long ago at the University of Oslo's archaeological museum, where a [uniquely young] recent [University of Oslo] PhD with hardly any publications at all got a steady research lectureship. She had been working closely with a professor at the museum. Who chaired the hiring committee. And who was once, prior to this, super angry with me when I complained about the Norwegian system on Facebook, haha! I've seen the same thing at the Oslo uni department and at NTNU in Trondheim recently. Local people with poor qualifications who could never compete anywhere else get permanent positions.

Denmark's system is completely non-transparent. You don't get a list of who applied and you don't get to read their evaluations, like you do in Sweden and Norway. What tends to happen in my experience is that you get a glowingly enthusiastic evaluation, which feels super nice, and then they hire some Dane. The country has only two archaeology departments that produce these strangely employable Danes.

Finland's university humanities used to be poorly funded. To boot they have recently been radically de-funded from that prior low level. The Finns understandably never advertise any jobs at all.

Sweden is no better than its neighbours. Our hiring committees for steady jobs are fully external, so that's good. But you get steady jobs on the strength of your temping experience. And temp teachers are hired with no external involvement at all, like in the recent case of Zeppo Begonia in Gothenburg. This was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. The Faculty of Humanities at this university, let me remind you, was severely censured by the Swedish Higher Education Authority back in May for many years of gross misconduct in their hiring practices. Local favouritism is the deal here.

There are quite a few people in Scandy academic archaeology whom I'd like to see driving a bus for a living. Zeppo Begonia is not one of them. He is a solid empiricist prehistorian of Central European origin whose work I respect and admire. If you ask me who should get research funding, I will reply “Zeppo Begonia”. I would like to see many more Zeppoes in my discipline. I think we should import them to replace some of our own shoddy products. But look at our respective qualifications for this measly one-year temp lectureship at 60%.

The ad specified that you needed solid knowledge of Scandy archaeology to do the job. I'm 45 and I've worked full time in Scandy archaeology for 25 years. Zeppo is 39 and started working and publishing here four years ago.
I have published five academic books. Zeppo has published one.
I have published 45 journal papers and book chapters in a wide range of respected outlets. Zeppo has published 23.
Zeppo and I have both been temp teachers for some percentage of four academic years.
I have published 29 pieces of pop-sci, including one book, plus eleven years of this blog. Zeppo has published no pop-sci.
Out of Zeppo's research output, little deals with Scandy archaeology, but several of these pieces are co-authored with senior figures in archaeology at the University of Gothenburg. Hint, hint.

This, as you can see, is just ridiculous. And there is no legal recourse unless you are discriminated against on grounds of race, gender etc. The appeals board has proved to ignore qualification issues. Believe me, I've tried.

To finish off, a few words for my colleagues at Scandinavian archaeology departments. Have you published five academic books and 45 journal papers? Are you extremely popular with the students? Have you worked in Scandinavian archaeology for at least 25 years? Have you got other heavy qualifications, like an 18-year stint as managing editor of a major journal and 11 years of keeping one of the world's biggest archaeology blogs? If your answer to any of these questions is no, then I would have your job if Scandy academic archaeology were a meritocracy.

The head of department, Helène Whittaker, has declined to comment on the case of Zeppo Begonia. I use this pseudonym for him to emphasise that he has done nothing wrong. He just applied for a job.

aardvarchaeology Fri, 09/29/2017 - 02:27

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If it helps, I've found life outside academia to be very agreeable. Less stress, greater security, and, actually, more freedom to plan and implement my job than when I was staff scientist.

Desperately unjust and disheartening. I am no stranger to such unjust treatment, towards the latter part of my previous career. A lot of people sympathised and expressed to me their sympathy and sense that I had been treated unfairly - I was grateful for their sentiments, but they actually did nothing to help. The bitterness it engendered in me hurt no one but myself. Carried too long, the bitterness can translate into real serious physical illness.

In financial circles there is a thing called the 'sunk cost fallacy':
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment

The term also applies in military conflicts.

The rational actor accepts that the 'sunk cost' has turned out to be a bad investment, despite showing early promise, and determines not to throw any more resources in after it, but instead pursues a different and more promising direction. The sooner that the rational actor comes to this decision, the better off he will be.

Cutting your losses and moving on without a backward glance, and if possible without harbouring feelings of bitterness (difficult, I know) is the very best thing you can do for yourself, and will cause you the least harm.

Academia in 'Merca: "Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars" https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/28/adjunct-professors-home…

I'm so sorry that things didn't work out, Martin. So... you've got qualifications, you're a good communicator and you have an internet audience. What's your next step in life?
PS, if it's sex work, please don't post videos...

Not to downgrade "Scandy" problems, but here at the University of Washington in Seattle WA USA the Regents violate the Washington State Open Meetings Act; they carved out a special, phony, high-paying job for a Seattle mayoral candidate who recently had to resign as Mayor of Seattle in the face of numerous allegations of past criminal behavior; and they have partnered with the student-murdering government of China to open up a "Global Innovation Exchange" near Microsoft. My alma mater University of Washington has become a corrupt, money-chasing elite club of country-club types and corporate whores who care not one whit about student lives or student welfare. Remember the Tiananmen Massacre!

Archaeology is shitty.
"No. 2 if by sea: Outhouse tied to Paul Revere is excavated" https://phys.org/news/2017-09-sea-outhouse-tied-paul-revere.html

PhDs are grossly overproduced so that very fine academics, such as yourself, have little hope of getting tenure-track positions. All of us employed outside or inside academia should be sympathetic.

Here in the U.S., collegiality, attitude, "fit", and predicted future productivity are all taken into account in hiring. It is not enough to say "X has more publications than Y, therefore X must be hired" (or, if Y is already employed there, that Y's job should be given to X). After all, that doesn't even take into account the quality of publications; it's only a bean count.

As for pop-sci and blogging, some departments may love that, but if too much time is spent on that, others will view it as a distraction from "real" scholarship. You have shown that you can be productive in both areas at once, but departments may still see the former as a time-waster. Maybe not fair, but the reality of academia.

I'm sorry to hear about your situation as well. I'm not an academic, but I'm having similar issues as an older lawyer without what we call "portable business" in the US. What do you plan to do next?

Martin, why was Scandinavia the only option? In the fields I know better, its pretty much expected that you will apply for jobs around the world if you are serious about a teaching career (even though that weighs the scales against those with spouses, dependents, or health problems). Canada has a larger population than the five Scandy countries put together, but that is still not a large academic job market.

The Assyriologists in Finland seem to have a bit of money this decade, but I think I am going to google that "radically de-funded" bit.

Thank you everyone for your kind words!

John, you are absolutely right, this is a time to remember the sunk cost fallacy.

Catherine, I have begun asking around for work in contract archaeology. This non-academic business offers the great majority of jobs in my field, and has to do with land development.

Sean, archaeology is strongly regional. My knowledge of archaeological finds and structures is useless in southern Europe, not to mention other continents. I've applied for numerous jobs in the UK on the strength of the Viking connection, with no result.

You got that right! All the best and good luck!

Thank you Mads!

Work to live, not live to work..but keep on chasing rainbows Martin.

To my experience the ONLY thing counting in academia is publishing in high profile peer-review journals.

That is:
Books: "What is this?" - 0 points
Book chapters: "Oh, pleeze..." - 0 points
Articles in non peer-review journals (like FV): "Give me a break!" - 0 points
Popular science: "HAHAHAHA!"

So, how was the stand between you and Zeppo with this system in mind?

I still beat him, but not by as large an amount.

Looking in from the outside, for a discipline like Archaeology, active involvement in field work seems like it should be an important component. Actually, essential, I would have thought.

For my own specialist discipline, Geotechnical Engineering, going to site is an essential component. There is no place for 'desk jockeys'. I have sacked Geotechnical Engineers who declined to engage in field work (or who pretended they were going to site when they weren't - spending whole days on site in rough terrain wearing a three piece woollen pin-striped suit and polished leather shoes? In the middle of a tropical Hong Kong summer? Not once, but frequently? Really? See that door over there? Walk through it and don't come back.)

At http://www.dailyuw.com/eclipse_services_classifieds there is now a campaign to break up the nefarious relationship between the University of Washington in pursuit of greedy revenues and the student-murdering government of China.

The US academic market is worse in most respects than what you have been dealing with in Scandinavia. Hiring committees are always comprised of professors in the hiring department. Rumor mill sites exist (at least in physics), but you can never officially know who else is applying, other than the person who ultimately accepts the job. And it's not unusual to see applicant numbers in the triple digits for a single position, so the committee often must weed out qualified applicants even before the interview stage.

The US actually does have laws against discrimination on the basis of age (as long as you are between 18 and 70). I understand that is unusual, and that many countries are free to consider you "over the hill" because you have passed your 40th birthday.

Eric, I believe US hiring committees rarely pick a locally educated applicant, though.

Martin, that depends strongly on the institution and department. In some fields, most especially chemistry, it is expected that faculty will have undergraduate degrees, Ph.D.s, and postdocs at three different institutions, none of which is the hiring institution. Physics, especially in large departments, is somewhat more forgiving: while such cases are rare, I do know of people who came to their institution as first-year students and never left. And while there is plenty of demand for both entry-level researchers and top level people, mobility for mid-career types like me is just about nil. Many physics departments will follow chemistry's example in insisting on hiring outsiders as faculty, but that is not always the case.

I have no direct knowledge of what the situation is in the humanities, other than that we, like everybody else, are overproducing Ph.D.s. But you would almost certainly be having difficulties in the US system, because the chances of getting a tenure-track position are vanishingly small for anybody whose degree is from one of the top-ranked (between 10 and 20) US universities. For example, a local construction contractor who has done some work on my house has a Ph.D. in history with a specialty in Colonial era music. In his case it was a hobby that he was serious enough about to pursue a Ph.D. When I first met him, he was a student, and he was doing construction work to pay the bills. He continues to do construction work because it pays far better than any job he could get with his Ph.D. Our history program has historically been one of our top-ranked Ph.D. programs, but it is definitely not in the top 20.

One scam that is routine in the US is the overly specific job advertisement (this is not limited to academia; you see it in the private sector as well). Sometimes the hiring department knows in advance exactly whom they want to hire, and write the job description such that the preferred candidate is the only one who qualifies. I don't waste my time applying for those jobs because I know they are looking for somebody else.

I think there's a "not" missing from "the chances of getting a tenure-track position are vanishingly small for anybody whose degree is from one of the top-ranked (between 10 and 20) US universities".

The overly specific job ad is well known in Scandyland too. We call it the "shoe size ad".

Metal Detectorist Tattoo #5 - Klee

aardvarchaeology — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 12:20:29 +0000

Metal Detectorist Tattoo #5 - Klee

René Lund Klee's tattoo

In our series of metal detectorist tattoos, where people put pictures of their best finds on themselves -- usually on their detector arms -- we now pay a visit to René Lund Klee. His tattoo depicts an Urnes brooch that he found on the Danish island of Lolland. The needlework was done there by Sandra's Ink in Nakskov.

Urnes brooch from Lolland

The Urnes style of c. AD 1050-1125 forms the end of the Scandinavian animal art tradition, which produced astonishing artistic riches during the Late Iron Age (c. 375-1125). Named for a Norwegian wooden church from the 1070s, the Urnes style is certainly no degenerate afterthought, but is instead like the final, spare and lucid collection of verse from an old poet who never lost the touch. René's brooch, which dates from about AD 1100, show's the art tradition's centuried main motif: the great beast. Sadly it is missing its head.

The Urnes style is also known as the Runestone style because it coincides with the great final bloom of the runestone tradition in Uppland and on Gotland. It has emphatic Christian connotations and usually occurs along with crosses and runic prayers. Yet everyone must have understood that this was the same distinctively Scandinavian art tradition that had been part of paganism until just a few generations previously. After Urnes comes a local version of a pan-European style: Romanesque art with its beautiful architecture, its murals, its woodwork, and, in Scandinavia, a school of charmingly inept figural sculpture.

The words next to the image on René's arm read "Life Is History". I think it's a good example of how keen and interested many detectorists are about the past. Thank you René! And any detectorist who would like me to feature a tattoo of a find -- please get in touch!

aardvarchaeology Mon, 06/27/2016 - 08:20

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archaeology

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tattoos

When I toured Sweden with the Seattle Scandia Folklore Society, we played concerts and dances in a high security prison and several folk festivals. Since I played English concertina, hardly a traditional Scandinavian instrument, I took the liberty of faking a Viking artifact showing a dragon playing an accordion in the engrossing twists and embellishments of good old Viking art. I'd love to share it with you. Maybe this summer when I visit Sweden I'll lose a button I made out of it in a given field for you or a metal detectorist friend to discover!

Metal Detectorist Tattoo #4 - Mortensen

aardvarchaeology — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 12:20:23 +0000

Metal Detectorist Tattoo #4 - Mortensen

Jan Mortensen's tattoo

Another metal detectorist tattoo! This time it's Jan Mortensen who has decorated the arm with which he brandishes the detector. The object is a 10th century trefoil brooch that Jan found in Holbæk municipality, northern Zealand. Hugo Tattoo in Holbæk did the needlework.

Trefoil brooches were worn by South Scandinavian women as a third brooch, to close their cloaks. But the overall shape descended from high-end acanthus-decorated silver mounts for the bandoliers worn by Charlemagne's vassals around AD 800. Their trefoils joined the strap from the scabbard to the ends of the strap worn over your shoulder. Viking Period art and design is eclectic in its influences.

10th century trefoil brooch from Holbæk municipality, Zealand

I've discussed 1 - 2 - 3 metal detectorist tattoos here before.

aardvarchaeology Thu, 06/23/2016 - 08:20

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tattoos

Metal Detectorist Tattoo #3 - Thomsen

aardvarchaeology — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 12:20:34 +0000

Metal Detectorist Tattoo #3 - Thomsen

Torben Thomsen's tattoo

Torben Thomsen found this relief-decorated and gilded pendant in Hjørring municipality, northernmost Jutland. It was his first really old piece. Knight Ink Tattoo in Frederikshavn did the tattoo work on Torben's lower left leg. Torben's pendant is missing its loop, but his workmate Daniel Bach Morville has found the complete piece below at a nearby site.

The motif is a pair of antithetical sea horses. To date them, let's look at the animal art -- the two objects, not the tattoo. The tattoo artist has classicised the motif and gotten rid of a lot of specifically Scandy detail. Considering the shoulder spiral, the cross-hatched body and the scythe-like element across the neck of each sea-horse, I want to place these things in the Jelling/Mammen phase in the late 10th century, and in a very high-status environment. So that's my bid: these are Middle Viking Period pendants, and damn fine ones too.

Big thanks to Torben and Daniel for allowing me to show their photographs on the blog. The previous instalment in our series of metal detectorist tattoos was from Steffen Hansen. Us archaeologists love to see people engage with the archaeological heritage, and you don’t really get more personal about it than this. Dear Reader, have you got a tattoo of an artefact that you’ve found? I’d love to show it here!

A similar pendant, also from Hjørring

aardvarchaeology Tue, 04/12/2016 - 08:20

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archaeology

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tattoos

I see why you say "Seehorses", but the bid from the museum is, that it is two fabulous animals. Showing good vs evil. Im glad you could use the the pigture. I forgot to tell you, that the founds was in the newspaper. You can see it here:

http://nordjyske.dk/nyheder/flotte-fund/57b126a8-3c16-41e0-bc5e-51c3654…

Sea horses are fabulous!

They don't taste very good.

Viking Crucifix

aardvarchaeology — Sat, 12 Mar 2016 07:30:21 +0000

Viking Crucifix

Metal detectorist Dennis Fabricius Holm made a pretty sweet find yesterday: the third known Birka crucifix.

These little wonders of 10th century goldsmith work are named for the first find, made in 1879 when Hjalmar Stolpe excavated in the cemeteries of Birka near Stockholm. In addition to the crucifix grave 660 contained, among other things, two other fine silver filigree pendants and a bronze-capped iron wand that may have served pagan religious purposes.

Crucifix from grave 660 at Birka, Uppland, Sweden.

In 2012 Silke Eisenschmidt identified fragments of a second Birka crucifix among the finds from a wagon burial at Ketting, excavated by Jens Raben in 1927. This is on the island of Als on the south-east coast of Jutland, just across the sound from Funen, and the new find is from Nyborg municipality on the east coast of that island. (I was there for a castle conference last August.) The two Danish sites are less than a day's sailing and rowing from the town of Hedeby, which suggests to me that this is where all three crucifixes were made. They're too similar for more than one or two people to have been making them. Birka and Hedeby seems to have shared an itinerant population of craftspeople and traders.

Fragmentary crucifix from a wagon burial at Ketting on Als, Denmark.

Many thanks to Dennis for letting me publish his photographs! Note that by not cleaning the find thoroughly, Dennis is doing the right thing: this is a job for the finds conservator.

The reverse of the newly found crucifix.

Update 13 March: My friend and collaborator Tobias Bondesson alerted me to a piece of filigreed hack silver from the Omø hoard that looks a lot like the right hand of a fourth Birka crucifix. It's different from its siblings in being decorated on the reverse and having no thumb, but to my eye there's little else this fragment could be from. The hoard was buried during the reign of Sweyn Forkbeard, 986–1014. It was found by detectorist Robert Hemming Poulsen in September of 2015. Omø is a small island between Funen and Zealand, not far across the water from Nyborg, which neatly reinforces the distribution we have begun to discern for the type.

Fragment of a Birka-type crucifix from the Omø hoard.

aardvarchaeology Sat, 03/12/2016 - 02:30

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The late 10th century hoard found on Omö last year has what is most likely an arm from such a crucifix. With all the Hiddensee style ornaments, that hoard has strong connections to Hedeby as well.

Åh, vad cool! Hade inte hört om fyndet från 2012. Hoppas metalldetektorism blir okej även i Sverige snart!

You've written before about the mostly positive relationship between detectorists and the archaeological community there. How significant for you (in general) is the loss of context problem when you utilize artifacts from detectorists?

No loss of context. Detectorists usually stay on ploughed soil and use GPS to geotag each find. They produce documentation to the same standard that I would use -- but they find way way more stuff per hour because they're better at using their instruments.

@Martin #4: Wow, that is really awesome. As a complete outsider (physicist), I had a mental image of elderly beachcombers in frayed shorts and floppy hats wandering around with metal detectors looking for pocket change or dropped watches.

What you describe sounds more like the amateur astronomical community: comet hunters and variable star observers doing work comparable to the professionals (but without all the grant-chasing and departmental admin burdens :-) ).

It varies from country to country. In poor countries and ones with weak heritage legislation most detectorists are just looters. In Denmark and the UK huge numbers of them are much-valued participants in archaeology. In Sweden our poorly thought-out heritage law keeps them strictly looking for last year's lost jewellery and spare change on beaches.

Hi, better photos here, where the crucifix has been slightly cleaned:
http://www.medievalhistories.com/christ-from-aunslev-denmarks-oldest-cr…

This is clearly Loki, not a Christian artifact!

Th image without a thumb may have been a vitally realistic detail of crucifixion. Driving a nail through the median nerve in the arm causes the thumb to flip over and appear to have disappeared. The Shroud of Turin is a major example of this occurrence.--Tom Reilly.

My thoughts are that they are not Jesus on the cross ,but were protectors made for maybe three sisters or brothers like good luck charm's

#12, Tom --

a) People in the 10th century didn't practice crucifixion and wouldn't know that.

b) The Shroud of Turin was made about 400 years after these pendants.

#13, Godfrey --

a) The fact that we know about 3-4 crucifixes of this type suggests that there must be hundreds lying around waiting to be discovered, and additional hundreds that were recycled for the silver already in the 11th and 12th centuries.

b) Why do you believe that protective amulets couldn't depict Jesus on the cross? The pendants clearly depict someone on a cross.

This is fascinating. It seems to me to be clear representation of being tied to the cross with rope, rather than nails. There is considerable gold working skill in evidence, they could have just as easily represented nails in their work. Could 'nailing to the cross' be a modern interpretation in error ? (I'm just a layman, obviously).

While everyone is calling this a 'crucifix', I find it odd the figure appears to be wearing a helmet with a clearly visible nose guard. Which makes me wonder what else it could be, besides a Christian crucifix.

These towns are strong missionary milieux. The inhabitants knew about Christian symbols.

Could be it represented either Christian or pagan symbology, depending on who was wearing it! It brings to mind a photo I saw of a mold that, by adding or removing a plug, could cast either a Mjolnir amulet or a Christian cross. The transition to Christianity was far from instantaneous among the Vikings.

Rich, everyone in the research community agrees with you that conversion was not instantaneous.

Are you sure it is a cross? It seem's to be more of a god fetish or something to do wih strength in battle.

Why does Everyone keep calling this a Crucifix? When a child first starts drawing people they draw them in this position...standing upright, arms outstretched. I see nothing to indicate that it is a crucifix. It's a cute artistic piece of artwork.

Getting referrals from Fox News now xD

Hehe... (-;

I would LOVE to believe that it is a Christian artifact as it it may appear to be for someone of our era. However, I looked up Loki as a result of a comment (I had never heard of that legend) and just in a few minutes research, I am wondering if enough research was done to be able to prove that it is not Loki. I saw pictures of ancient depictions of Loki online where he was laying down bound with hopes around his wrists and ankles. So, I am not convinced at this point that this in fact a Christian relic. Need more from the scientists/archeologist.

I am a Viking archaeologist. The Viking Period is the time when everyone in Scandinavia becomes intimately aware of Christianity. Regardless of whether they convert or not. The interpretation of these pendants is uncontroversial.

Martin R. you have a picture of the fractured crucifix from Als DK. Look at the groin region - what do you see?

(remember who saw it first)

Best regards

Ove

Haha, excellent! Somebody call Mary Magdalene and tell her the important bits are still stuck on!

- or call Martin R for a learned interpretation?

Racist Detectorists

aardvarchaeology — Wed, 11 Nov 2015 13:20:23 +0000

Racist Detectorists

In countries with a big metal detector hobby, the stereotypical participant is an anorak-wearing, rural, poorly educated, underemployed male. I don't know how true this cliché image is. But apart from the anorak, it's certainly an accurate description of the core voter demographic behind the rise of racist right-wing populist parties. These people have trouble finding jobs, and they have trouble seeing through the racist propaganda that tells them they would have jobs and girlfriends if it weren't for the bloody furriners.

I'm known as a detectorist-friendly archaeologist. I've made many friends in the little Swedish hobby over the past twelve years. These people are overwhelmingly urban professionals, often with university degrees and pretty solid incomes. I'm talking a banker, a school teacher, a newspaper editor, a businessman, a scientist, a software company CEO. I've never known them to make racist remarks, live or online. Sweden's laws regarding amateur metal detector use are hopelessly restrictive, so when not collaborating with researchers like myself, most of our few detectorists spend their free time collecting last year's coins and finger rings on beaches.

But now I've gotten involved in Danish and Norwegian detectorist groups on Facebook. Those countries have more liberal laws and bigger hobbies. Many of their detectorists have added me as Fb buddies. And suddenly I've got several rural Danes and Norwegians in my Fb feed who will post nine pictures of interesting new archaeological finds, then a piece of racist propaganda, followed by nine more finds, etc. I'm just appalled. It's so far from my Swedish experience.

Let me be clear and fair here. Most of my Danish & Norwegian detectorist contacts on Fb never post racist stuff. But the only people who do post that shit in my feed are Danish & Norwegian detectorists. I wonder if the main detectorist associations of Denmark and Norway have taken a public stand against racism, for instance by welcoming immigrants as members.

aardvarchaeology Wed, 11/11/2015 - 08:20

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In the US metal-detecting is often advertised as an excellent hobby for retired people. It gets you out of the house, you get some gentle exercise, it's not too expensive, and hey, you might find something cool.

I don't know what the laws are like re: archaeological finds, but my impression is that most of the archaeology in the US doesn't involve metal finds.

Anyway, I'd like to think it's just older people who post racist things on FB, but the people who post that kind of stuff to my FB are usually young-ish, though they do tend towards rural.

Here's a thought:
Up until now your social circle was constrained to academia and other government-funded activities.
The marxist Left have successfully imposed on much of the population, especially academia and government, severe restrictions on their ability to exercise free speech.
Detectorists, on the other hand, may well be on average far less tyrannised by political correctness, maybe because they are more likely to work for small business, or be among those sad, under-educated unemployed people you look down upon.
Therefore, your recent exposure to a segment of the population that is more able to exercise free speech has also exposed you to thoughts and ideas that are very much suppressed within your natural social circles.
Dissatisfaction with immigration from the middle-east is widespread and growing.
Here is what one of your policemen recently had to say:
"“If we’re in pursuit of a vehicle, it can evade us by driving to certain neighborhoods where a lone patrol car simply cannot follow, because we’ll get pelted by rocks and even face riots. These are No-Go Zones. We simply can’t go there.”"
http://fof.se/tidning/2015/5/artikel/darfor-okar-de-kriminella-gangens-…
Humans are tribal, and social fractures created by non-assimilating migrants clinging to failed cultures will result in enhanced tribalism - call it "racism" if you like.
The root cause is not the "racist" individual ideas of those reacting in this way, the root cause is governance, and in this case a clear-cut case of governance failure.

Oh, and I have a metal-detector (yes, I'm an under-educated nerd with no girlfriend) which has provided me with many hours of frustration.
shell casings, spent bullets, fragments wire, and plenty of "hot" rocks - semi-metamorphosed sandstone with concentrations of iron in them. Nothing good yet. I'm concentrating on a 12km2 area which had a large chinese gold-digging camp on it about 140 years ago.

I don't think people with your opinions are likely to think more independently than the academic Left does. Maybe that's actually what you mean by "tribal".

I live in Fisksätra, a council housing development that went up at the same times as those few Swedish areas where kids are throwing stones at the fire truck. There's 85 nationalities here, including many many folks from the Middle East. Yet we don't have that kind of segregation problems. Why this is so must be a question for social scientists, but I believe two important factors are that Fisksätra is a comparatively small-scale development, and located immediately next to one of Stockholm's most affluent suburbs.

As for hot rocks: have you come across cold rocks that will *silence* the quiet whining of an active detector? Those are strange.

You must be Swedish! I'm from Denmark. There are vast differences in what is considered acceptable social norms between those two countries, and I suppose the average Norwegian is as far from the Swedish "political correctness"/"moral majority" as is the average Danish. Seen from here, to speak directly; you Swedes are way over the top, and practically seems to live in a censored country, like China. To a Dane, it seems hat even recognizing objective facts like "person a has a different hair colour/skin colour than person b", or "person a speaks another language than person b", or "person a was born in another part of the world than person b", or "person a has a different life-style than person b" ...even such very neutral statements appear to us Danes as something Swedes frown upon and consider racist.

I'm not talking about statements like "Those people have dark skin". I get stuff like "Send those dirty Muslims back home".

Judging from my family in Norway, the racist postings increase with exponential distance from major cities. My biggest offender is a second cousin who lives in Finnmark and has probably never talked to a Muslim in his life.

Here we worry about the practice of taqiya. Read the koran and then comment on assimilation and immigrants.

Miles, some googling leads me to believe that you're a Mid-western gun dealer. And you're warning us about taqiyyah, the religious rule that allows Muslims to denounce or conceal their faith if their lives are threatened otherwise. Do you know how paranoid this makes you look?

Dear Martin, How may i send a slightly longer, albeit autobiographical explanatory metal detecting follow up?
Thanks, Miles

See "About Aardvarchaeology" top right for a contact link.

Danish Castle Road Trip

aardvarchaeology — Mon, 31 Aug 2015 12:20:36 +0000

Danish Castle Road Trip

I spent last week in Denmark at a friendly, informative and rather unusual conference. The thirteenth Castella Maris Baltici conference (“castles of the Baltic Sea”) was a moveable feast. In five days we slept in three different towns on Zealand and Funen and spent a sum of only two days presenting our research indoors. The rest of the time we rode a bus around the area and looked at castle sites and at fortifications, secular buildings, churches and a monastery in four towns. Our Danish hosts had planned all of this so well that the schedule never broke down. Add to this that the food and accommodation were excellent, and the price very humane, and you will understand that I was very happy with the conference.

This was my second CMB. Last year in May I attended the twelfth one in Lodz, Poland. It's an excellent education for me as I delve into High Medieval castle studies with my ongoing project about castles in Östergötland.

You might think that within such a specialised field there would be lots of debate at the conference, but actually participants present work that is mainly of local or national relevance. Your audience takes a polite interest in what you're doing, but nobody presents any results or methods that change the game for everybody else. I imagine that this has to do with written history's specificity. These scholars aren't dealing with large generalised prehistoric cultural categories. They're dealing with specific people and events at specific castle sites. If someone has found out new stuff about the architectural phasing of a certain castle in Lithuania, then this will not change the way someone in south Jutland thinks about her subject much. But every specific case presented, and every site visited, offers a wealth of details that add up to help castle scholars contextualise their work at home.

The presentation that I found the most interesting was Christofer Herrmann's and Felix Biermann's about recent fieldwork at Barczewko / Alt-Wartenburg in northern Poland. This wooded area, Warmia, saw a planned colonisation effort sponsored by German lords in the 14th century. Written sources document that a settlement was founded at Barczewko in 1326 and razed to the ground by Lithuanian raiders in 1354. Attracted by a long-known but undated defensive bank-and-moat, my colleagues have now mapped the site with geophys and excavated key buildings. The geophys showed a neatly planned mini-town, with a main street, a town square and a town hall. The cellars are still full of the debris from the fires set by the attackers, on top of the goods stored in the cellars, and a few bodies of murdered inhabitants. Almost a little Pompeii, and very painstakingly excavated. The pottery is dominated by Silesian designs (from the south-west part of modern Poland), giving an idea of whence the colonists came.

aardvarchaeology Mon, 08/31/2015 - 08:20

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I have lived in Scania all my life and I can only say thanks to this great bucket list of castles. I know Kronborg but not the others.

Very cool trip; sounds like great fun, particularly with your own excavations to share. People who have dug up castles must be a rare elite.

I assume some of the sculpture you photographed here occasioned your observation on the grotesque nature of 17th-century Scandy sculpture vs. painting. Does this represent a "folk" style as opposed to upper-class classically trained artists working in oil painting? Would any contemporary painting surviving in these contexts be similarly grotesque?

The style looks medieval, with only the baroque acanthus leaves to indicate its date.

It's not folk art, it's a geographically peripheral style of elite art. Just like Albertus Pictor in the late 15th looks nothing like his Italian contemporaries.

Fascinating, Martin, I wish I could see all the things you've seen. The music lover in me is tempted to see a general northern European appetite for the grotesque (opposed to direct, idealized classical simplicity) that lasted through Bach's era, with his intricate, learned, unfashionable counterpoint, so different from what southern Europe was producing at the time. Bach's patrons complained at his style; I wonder if these guys, too, would have preferred a classical style or were tempted to import Italians like Peter the Great.

And Yet Another Gold Foil Figure Die from Zealand

aardvarchaeology — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 13:20:04 +0000

And Yet Another Gold Foil Figure Die from Zealand

Guldgubbar are tiny pieces of gold foil with (usually) embossed motifs. They most commonly depict single men, then embracing couples, then single women, all in fine clothing. They date from the Vendel Period (540-790) and seem to have been religious artefacts. Usually they are found in the remains of elite residences, concentrating in and around roof-bearing postholes in the main hall. They form this gold-poor period's continuation of the Migration Period's gold bractate pendants and other sumptuous goldwork.

Gold foil figures weren't necessarily made where they are found. They are eminently portable, and identical ones have been found at multiple sites. But if you find the copper-alloy dies they were stamped on, then you've probably located a production site. And unlike the tiny foils themselves, the dies can be located in the ploughsoil by means of a metal detector. We know of fewer than 25 such dies. In 2007 I was lucky enough to direct fieldwork where Niklas Krantz found the northernmost one known to archaeology: at Sättuna in Kaga outside of Linköping. The Sättuna die (below) shows a single woman seen in profile, opening her mouth to speak or sing and lifting her hand in an imperious gesture.

On 23 February Danish metal detectorist Dennis Maigaard found a closely similar die while working with a county museum. It has the Sättuna lady's sideways displaced feet that suggest she's sitting down, it has the great disc-on-bow-brooch under her jawline, but it hasn't got the raised hand. The site is a known elite one at Boeslunde on SW Zealand that has yielded at least one die before. I wish Swedish archaeology would collaborate more with people like Dennis instead of putting destructive legal obstacles in their way!

I've covered dies from Zealand before: here and here. Thanks to Hans Henrik Hansen for the photograph and to Tobias Bondesson for information.

aardvarchaeology Mon, 03/10/2014 - 09:20

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Martin, that is a double edged blade - once you arrive a couple of times on the burial field to see that everything has been brutally dug up and looted, it kinda gets hard to find it in yourself to not wish they all would find themselves dead in a hurry...
Of course, there are also a decent people who only see it as a hobby and willingly work with authorities, yet, it seems, that a steady majority, at least here, are simply grave robbers of the worst variety.

I know things are different in your country. But this is Scandinavia. Our protection laws are old and powerful. Our population is well educated and wealthy. Our metal detectorists make much more money just going to work than they would if they looted sites.

Well, as I understand, there is some sort of cooperation in that regard in Sweden, is it not? I seem to remember reading that original discoveries in Uppakra where done thanks to metal detection?

There have been only a few local and temporary collaborations with detectorists in Sweden. The Uppåkra investigations were re-started when Danish detectorists contacted archaeologists at the University of Lund...

Artis, Here is a good summary of the cooperation between the hobby and archaeologists in Denmark

Since the early 1980s, metal detector surveying conducted by amateur archaeologists has contributed significantly to archaeological research and heritage practice in Denmark. Here, metal detecting has always been legal, and official stakeholders pursue a liberal model, focusing on cooperation and inclusion rather than confrontation and criminalization. Like no other surveying method since the invention of the shovel, the metal detector has contributed to increasing enormously the amount of data and sites from metal-rich periods. Virtually all of the spectacular and ground-breaking discoveries of the past decades are owed to metal detectors in the hands of amateur archaeologists. And it is these finds and sites that today constitute one of the very foci of archaeological research. This article provides an overview of the current status of liberal metal detector archaeology in Denmark 30 years after its inception, and attempts to identify the reasons why this popular hobby never developed into the problem it has become in other parts of the world. It concludes that the success of the liberal model in Denmark is the result of a very complex interplay of legislative, historical, cultural, and social factors. On this basis, it is discussed whether the Danish experience can be used as a source of inspiration in the necessary progression towards a new legal agenda for responsible metal detector archaeology.

Andres S Dobat, European Journal of Archaeology 16:4

Martin; Could it be that archaeologists finds "guldgubbar" in and around roof-bearing postholes in the main halls because archaeologists are looking for "guldgubbar" mainly in and around roof-bearing postholes in the main halls. Just a thought

Maybe! I sure wouldn't mind discovering another context where guldgubbar can reliably be found.

It will be interesting to see the results from Västra Vång!

A few 'Guldgubbar' have been found in the sand of the beach of Eastern Scania near Ravlunda. martin has wrtten about this.

@Thomas - ooh, whereabouts? I live near there. (Mental picture of grubbing in sand with bare hands, cackling and extracting many small gold foil items...)

Ravlunda? (mental picture of no snow whatsoever and palm fronds genty waving in the breeze)
(OT) Ancient graves hint at cultural shift to Anglo-Saxon Britain http://phys.org/news/2014-02-ancient-graves-hint-cultural-shift.html

Jane, the sites are just south of the stream mouth at Ravlunda. Here's an article about recent fieldwork there.

Birger, Ravlunda means Amber Grove, and the groves in Scandy place names are usually interpreted as pagan sanctuaries.

(OT) Language 'evolution' may shed light on human migration out-of-Beringia http://phys.org/news/2014-03-language-evolution-human-migration-out-of-…
Some early Americans actually migrated back to Siberia.

Ännu mer att läsa om Maletofta (och Ravlunda) i denna färska rapport från Sydsvensk Arkeologi som handlar (främst) om undersökningarna 2008-2011: http://www.sydsvenskarkeologi.se/pdf/2014/2014-015.pdf

That's excellent! Thanks Tobias!

@Birger - yes, that's right, Ravlunda is a semi-tropical paradise. Skånsk cuisine is well known for its use of fresh coconut juice.

@Martin/Tobias - thanks for the articles, very interesting. Looks like it was quite a major high status settlement. Although to my eyes, the location is unusual; low lying with no features aiding defence, no sheltered harbour, no particular natural resources. Or is that normal in this part of the world?

Jane, on the availability of harbors near the settlement, I am not sure about the effect of post-glacial rebound on the coast since. Further south some coastal regions have actually been sinking, due to the rigid litosphere acting like a see-saw. So knowing what the old coastline looked like can be difficult.

The mouth of the stream north of Maletofta should be OK as a harbour for that period's shallow-draught ships.

Checking the shoreline for 1050 cal AD at http://sgu.se, I find that it hasn't moved significantly.

As for natural resources, these polities were based on agriculture, slave labour and raiding. Coastal Scania is great for all these activities.

Great Links about Maletofta.! Thanks!
So Maleofta was the first site in current Sweden where 'Guldgubbar' was found in 170 BC?

1700s AD.

Birger, while I don't have time to read that PLOS One article carefully, some attempts to solve problems in historical linguistics with lots of computers and Markov chains have been strongly criticized ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jHsy4xeuoQ https://tinyurl.com/nl22p7c
). That makes me nervous about the article and its methods, although I am comforted that the first author teaches linguistics. Its definitely an interesting problem ...

As my adopted Polish Jewish uncle used to say "Stupid English language."...."...was found dating from 170 BC".

Wikipedia says Scania has some of the most fertile soil in the world. Sounds like an incentive.

(OT) We interrupt the usual programs to bring skeptic readers this morsel: “spiritual archaeology.”
http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2014/03/13/benefiel-america-curs…
“Now here’s a meeting of conspiratorial minds. Cindy Jacobs, she of the bottomless spaghetti bowl*, and John Benefiel, another self-declared “prophet” who thinks the Statue of Liberty is demonic and that he can cause earthquakes with prayer,
meet to discuss how America is cursed because the Egyptians dedicated the country to Baal, thus giving Satan a “legal right” to interrupt God’s blessings. They call this “spiritual archaeology.”
*She literally claimed that Zod provided spaghetti from her bowl than she had put in. W hile that may be a feature of RPGs, it is raely encountered in reality.

I need to get a major project going with these people!

Soory. Yes I meant 1790 AD..

Erratum: She claimed god had provided *more* spaghetti than she had put in the bowl... I think there is a RPG term for that.
-1790 BC would be a curiously precise date :)

(OT) Richard III faces final battle in London court http://phys.org/news/2014-03-richard-iii-london-court.html

Martin, do you know if there's a danish site similar to this http://sgu.se, ?

I don't know. Write to a Danish quaternary geologist and ask!

Detector-madness in Sweden

http://www.archaeology.su.se/polopoly_fs/1.168236.1393321364!/menu/stan…

Bornholm's Golden Acrobat Girl

aardvarchaeology — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 20:18:09 +0000

Bornholm's Golden Acrobat Girl

Smørenge is one of the sites on Bornholm that keeps yielding mid-1st-millennium gold mini-figurines. But in addition to the 2D representations on embossed gold foil known as guldgubber, an artisan employed by the magnate family at Smørenge also made nude 3D figurines. The fifth of these was found by one of the island's famously skilful metal detectorists in May, and she's quite a revelation. Because representations of women are far less common than of men in Iron Age art, and nude women are almost unknown.

The Smørenge woman is wearing only a hatched belt. She has the prominent "seer's thumbs" common in the era's art, and all the female anatomy we know and love is clearly modelled. Lines depicting long hair are incised onto her head and neck. Notches on her upper arms suggest that she is intended to be tied with a piece of wire or thread. Her body's overall curvature and her outstretched feet suggest that she is performing a back-flip, a motif known e.g. from the closely coeval Söderby bracteate hoard where a bearded man is seen doing acrobatics. She is 42 mm long and weighs 3 g.

The thing that commentators are wondering about is the odd cogged ridge along her spine. My guess is that she is simply a skinny acrobat whose vertebrae are visible as a line of bumps along her back.

René Laursen has a short presentation of the find at the Bornholm Museum web site, and a more detailed one in Skalk 2013:3 (June).

aardvarchaeology Wed, 07/17/2013 - 16:18

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Coot! Not at Sorte Muld but outside of that area. This lttle Island has it own precious secrets. Never mentioned in Norse myths?

I agree about the vertebrae - and she has great calf muscles!

Thomas, Bornholm was too far from Snorre Sturlasson, and the Christian monks who wrote down stuff in Denmark centuries later would have been biased against pre-Christian oral history.

Slightly OT: Neanderthal "jewelry" 47000 BC http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/07/18/the-most-precious-jew…

Looks like barrette to me. What acrobatics is the male figurine doing?

You mean it looks like a hair clip? The bearded Söderby acrobat is also doing the backflip, only with outstretched arms.

(OT) Nasty business. But Martin will be safe in Umeå, this crap is very rare.

"Two men arrested for Umeå station slaying" http://www.thelocal.se/49180/20130721/

The other shooting at Ersboda was within a hundred yards of my boss' house.

OT "Archaeology uncovers amazing finds in West Sussex" Bronze age, neolithic sites http://phys.org/news/2013-07-archaeology-uncovers-amazing-west-sussex.h…

Yes - it needs another piece, and then it becomes a hair clip, or barrette as William has correctly called it. Then that would explain the bumps.

It's a very clever piece.

John, isn't gold quite soft? Would another piece stay in place when subjected to mechanical stress?

Lacking rubber bands in dark-ages Sweden they presumably had one of their peons tie it in with a piece of string or leather.

Acrobatics; are there any written sources about the importance of this activity during the era?

Mu, yes, I have a chronocentric attitude to high-end jewelry. Iron-age people were more pragmatic about design and use, even using gold coin necklaces as a portable bank.

Assuming the figurine to date from about AD 500, no, alas there aren't any useful narrative sources for Scandinavia. Just a few brief mentions in Frankish annals of Hygelac/Hugleikr, and they can't even decide if he's a Dane or a Geat.

Birger, yes, pure gold is pretty soft compared to many other metals, but it's not *that* soft - you can make jewellery out of it no problem which will resist moderate mechanical stress. It will bend, but it's malleable, not brittle, so you can just bend it back into shape with your hands. (One of the visual 'wow' events in Hong Kong is to visit a gold shop that stocks pure gold jewellery for brides to wear at Chinese weddings and realise that all that glitters *is* gold. I had a Chinese wedding, so I know what it feels like. Pure gold, I mean.) Held in place by a leather thong or whatever, holding hair it would not be under too much stress or get banged around too much.

My wife's grandmother's wedding ring was a fairly chunky one made of pure gold, and she wore it constantly until she died at age 99 - it looked a bit misshapen and bashed around, but not too much, and a finger ring is going to get a lot more bumping around and mechanical damage than a hair clip.

I love the stuff - to me it has innate beauty. Give me a piece of pure gold to hold and I turn into Evil John.

Unalloyed gold is also easily abraded. Fine filigree work can get worn away pretty swiftly nanometer by nanometer.

@Martin: The vertebrae shoudn't be visible when she is bending backwards. I like the hair clip hypothesis better.

On the other hand, what kind of a person would wear a nude female in his/her hair? At that time people could be pretty raunchy, but still...

@John Massey: the gold that is normally used in jewellery is not pure. There are always trace amounts of other metals mixed in it (mostly silver) which improve durability. I don't know how pure that girl is, or how pure gold the metallurgists of that era could make. The first gold coins of Kroisos had so much silver in them that the metal was called elektron, not gold.

And you obviously haven't been in the transit hall shopping area of Dubai airport. Arabs just LOVE gold. In large amounts.

Lassi, yep, gold dispensing machines.

While we're on the subject, it is a bit surprising that China is now the world's largest gold producer, as well as now being the world's largest importer, having overtaken India. That happened when China deregulated and permitted individual citizens to own gold, and India increased the tax on gold. But the Chinese central bank has also been buying a lot. The problem with gold, though, is that far more has been sold on paper than exists in the world as physical metal - so people can drive the gold price right down just by selling a lot of the paper, as happened recently. No gold changed hands to drop the price that much, it was all just pieces of paper. Some time, I guess the penny will drop and people who invest in gold on paper but don't actually get to hold the metal they think they have bought will realise that all they have bought is a piece of paper, and the price will bifurcate, with the paper presumably becoming worthless unless someone will actually honour it by giving you the face value of the paper in real metal, but I have no idea when that might happen. But if everyone holding paper investments all tried to demand their metal at the same time, the demand would be impossible to satisfy.

The gold jewellery worn at weddings here is 99.9%. But it's not the sort of stuff that women would wear every day, the designs are not suitable and it would look weird - it gets worn for one day and then put away in a safe deposit box somewhere, and just stays there, gets left to the kids, who can sell it if they need the cash.

A lot of people do wear pretty heavy 99.9% neck chains, but they're not for display purposes, they go inside the shirt - that's a way of investing in gold without trusting a bank to look after it for you.

When the price of gold dropped a while back, I told one of my junior work colleagues she should slip out to the nearest gold shop and get some. She said "I've already been - there are queues a mile long, and all of the gold shops have sold out."

It doesn't take much to make gold a lot stronger/abrasion resistant - I had another work colleague who had a wedding ring that was 99.9%, with 1 part per 1000 of iridium, and he couldn't bend it.

As to how pure the girl is, I don't know, but she's hanging around with her assets hanging out. Yes, it's admittedly an odd design for someone to wear as a prominent piece of adornment. I don't see any abrasion marks where another metal piece would be in contact if it was a barrette, but I guess the other piece could have been of wood, or just a leather thong.

Incidentally, my thought was that the line of bumps on the girl's back might have been the goldsmith's little joke - they could have served a functional purpose for a barrette, but they look like they could be her vertebrae, even though she is arching her back the wrong way to make the vertebrae protrude.

In fact, I'm wondering...Chinese gold wedding jewellery is bought/paid for by the groom-to-be, and is used to adorn the bride on the wedding day, but thereafter she keeps it - it's hers, as a sort of store of wealth/insurance policy. He never gets his grubby hands on it (well, I did, but only to play with for a little while - then I had to give it back.) For example, if her husband ever deserts her, she can sell the gold to get some money. I'm idly pondering whether the golden acrobat girl served a similar, albeit rather more graphic, purpose - adornment on a special day, and then just as a store of wealth thereafter, i.e. not intended for habitual wear.

Sorry for serial posting, but it's a fascinating and thought-provoking piece.

In Sweden there used to be something called the morgongåva, where the husband would give his bride a piece of jewellery (or a piece of land, or a province, depending on his means) on the morning after the wedding. To me that has always looked a lot like a john paying a prostitute.

The concept of a 'bride price' or 'dower' is a common one across many different cultures. The reverse process of 'dowry' as practised in South Asia always struck me as odd - how would you see that, as procurement of a gigolo? It's possible to go further, and characterise traditional (pre-feminism) Western marriage as a form of institutionalised prostitution.

Some practices are undoubtedly somewhat icky to my mind, like the Cantonese custom of the husband giving the bride's parents a roast pig to signify that the bride was a virgin.

So anyway, could this gold clip have been a 'morning gift'? It's fairly graphic, but strikes me as somewhat more elegant and a better store of some amount of wealth than a roast pig.

Haha, the pig custom is just surreal! I wonder what the new in-laws would give the groom if everybody knew that the daughter was not a virgin, e.g. if she was a widowed mother. "Here you go son, have a bag of yams, you're going to need your strength!".

Another Gold Foil Figure Die from Zealand

aardvarchaeology — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 13:17:26 +0000

Another Gold Foil Figure Die from Zealand

Another one of the rare production dies for 6/7/8th century gold foil figures has come to light, again on Zealand! This is an unusual design depicting a lady from the front. She's wearing a long dress, a cloak and two bead strings. She seems to be cupping her hands around a ring at her abdomen. The rings on her dress hem are quite odd. Parallels to the general motif and design are known from Eketorp on Öland (a foil) and Sättuna in Östergötland (a die). Congratulations to detectorist Hans, and thanks for doing other folks with an interest in the past a big favour!

Update 4 Feb: Aard regular Kevin points out that this Vendel Period lady looks just like a Dutch Christmas cookie! Image from 123RF.

A Dutch speculaas cookie.

aardvarchaeology Fri, 02/01/2013 - 08:17

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archaeology

Art

Denmark

I've said it before, I'll say it again and I will say it in the future: liberalize the swdish metal detector legislation - and do it now!

It would be interesting to see digitalized, pehaps 3d, interpretations of these gold foil figues.

Gives the impression of a Völve. The rings, the extremely long hair - parted in the middle, not in the usual women's knotted tail... Wonderfully detailed, would love to look at it IRL...

Die...? I don't think so. I see it as an ordinary - but RARE - vikingage pendant, known with different female figurines... Am I wrong? - And Håkan: we all hope for the best, but fear the worst!

I haven't seen the back side but the finder says nothing about any fastening apparatus.

Claus, the piece measures only 30 by 15 mm.

I prefer to imagine them baking tiny speculaas: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LCVZWFAEodk/RXEM4EACTuI/AAAAAAAAACE/TUvr_edra…

Haha, awesome!

Hans the finder just wrote me to say that there is no trace of any fastener on the back side.

Any news about the unusual find ?
Are there any traces left of goldfoil ?
Are there hammermarks on the backside ?

Awesome nice find though ;-)

Is that a woman? The face looks rather masculine (I'm getting the impression of a beard and moustach, although that might just be the way they've carved the chin and wouth).

I believe those facial features are pretty unisex within the parameters of the period's art. The person's dress is solidly female.

Nice find. I also had the immediate association with a speculaasje. Which are the cookies for Sint Nicolaas (Sinterklaas) at December 5th, not for Christmas, btw.

I'm ashamed to admit that only this morning did I make the connection between the word "gubben", which my Norwegian cousin uses to refer to her husband, "gubberøre", one of my favorite edibles, and "gullgubbe" -- I had no idea it was gender-specific. I assume it started as a colloquialism and only later entered the academic lexicon. What would the female equivalent be -- gullkjerringa?

Yes, "guldgubbe/ar" is what 18th century farmers at Ravlunda called the foil figures they found eroding out of some coastal sand dunes and handed in to an academic. "Guldgumma/or" is what their female counterparts would be called in modern Swedish.