Fornvännen's Spring Issue On-line

Fornvännen 2014:1 is now on-line on Open Access. We've had trouble with our on-line archive for more than a month. This was because the UV units, Sweden's largest contract archaeology organisation, moved from the umbrella of the National Heritage Board to that of the Swedish History Museum. The IT folks were super busy with the move, but now they've got Fornvännen's stuff up and running again.

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Fornvännen's web site has become subsumed into the general document repository of the National Heritage Board. I am not happy about this. But still, we can now offer two new issues on-line for free! So much good research here! Autumn 2012 (no 3): Ludvig Papmehl-Dufay on the first farmers of Öland…
Fornvännen 2013:3 is now on-line on Open Access. Morten Axboe and Magnus Källström on a classic find of runic gold bracteates from Trollhättan, recently expanded by a metal detectorist who would have been better informed about how to go about things if Swedish law had encouraged responsible metal…
Bronze Age rock art along Sweden's south-east coast is rich but not as varied as that of the famous west-coast region. One motif that we have been missing is the four-wheel wagon. It isn't common anywhere except on one site, Frännarp in inland Scania (below right), but we have had none whatsoever…
I'm proud to announce that Fornvännen, Journal of Swedish Antiquarian Research, is now up to speed on the Open Access side. Our excellent librarian and information jockey Gun Larsson has just put the third and fourth issues for last year on-line. Fornvännen appears on-line for free with a six-…

Some fun reading for the non-specialist. I do wonder about the strike-a-light stones paper; she mentions how the stone type must covary with the carbon content of the steel, and she classifies different colours of the stones, but nowhere is there any kind of chemical analysis of the materials.

Very few of the stones are found together with the iron implement. But you could do a targeted chemical study of those assemblages.

Auså is in Scania

The line of what this paper is about is found some lines down and not at the top:

"Hur kommer det sig då att en dopfunt i en by
i nordvästra Skåne har en komplex inskrift på latin?
Medeltida dopfuntar har vanligen inga inskrifter,
och de som finns består oftast av korta
böner eller signaturer."

That is the puzzle and perhaps science writers should write their reports more like a detective story or a news story?

By Thomas Ivarsson (not verified) on 09 Jan 2015 #permalink

Dugout canoes must be good objects for dendrochronology. Add isotopic peculiarities and you can see the region where the tree grew. During their "lifetimes" they might change owners many times, following trade routes.

By BirgerJohansson (not verified) on 13 Jan 2015 #permalink

And dendrotopography! Each area and tree species has its own characteristic base curve. Allows you to identify wood origins.