Aardvarchaeology
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 | May 21, 2007Wednesday 23 May will see the Four Stone Hearth blog carnival appear in all its archaeo/anthro glory at Greg Laden's blog. If you have read or blogged anything good on those themes lately, then make sure to submit it to Greg ASAP. (Yes, you can submit stuff you've found on other people's blogs.)
I'm hosting a blog carnival myself on Thursday 24 May: Carnivalesque, on Ancient and Medieval history. Please help me stock that carnival with good reading matter! Submit here.
aardvarchaeology | May 21, 2007
Dear Reader Arkein from the land of the Freedom Fries and EuroDisney set me a-thinking about Medieval barns, butcheries, kitchens and dinner-tables. I've got a story about that, and I believe it's far more likely to be true than that slanderous yarn about Louis XIV's pinkie.
The English language has different words for livestock species and for their meat. Cow -- beef. Pig -- pork. Sheep -- mutton. And there's a pattern to the linguistic descent of these words: the live-animal words were there already in Old English, whereas the meat words are French loan words appearing from the Middle…
aardvarchaeology | May 20, 2007Blogging here at Sb has many advantages, one of which is a free subscription to Seed. I received the latest four issues the other day and have been reading them with great interest. It's a very pretty mag with great content.
One detail surprises me. Almost all Most of the models in the ads are black. I have an inkling what this may mean: let me explain.
Most of Seed's readers are in the US.
In the US, black people are on average less well-educated and affluent than white people.
Therefore, marketing a US pop-sci mag primarily to black people would be a bad idea.
The ads are instead in all…
aardvarchaeology | May 19, 2007
Here's a story I heard a long time ago about syphilis. I don't know if it's true: you tell me, Dear Reader.
You know how posh little old ladies and flamboyant gay men like to hold their pinkie finger in the air when drinking tea? This is because of syphilis at the court of Louis XIV in 17th century Paris. Those people were severely pox-ridden. And they were the cultural elite of their time, emulated in every detail of dress and behaviour by Europeans everywhere.
One thing syphilis does to you is damage the joints of your fingers. After a few years, you are no longer able to bend your pinkies…
aardvarchaeology | May 18, 2007[More blog entries about sex, monogamy, polygamy, evolutionarypsychology; sex, polygami, monogami, evolutionär psykologi.]
The nature vs. nurture debate will always be with us poor cultured apes. Only very rarely can we lay the blame for our behaviour on genetic programming. A typical issue is that of monogamy.
I happened upon two bloggers (here and here) who argue that humans are polygamous ("everybody's built to screw around"), or at least polygynous ("men are built to screw around"), by nature. They base this assertion on the results of research showing that a) somewhere between a percent…
aardvarchaeology | May 17, 2007I'm proof-reading pdf files of Fornvännen's summer issue, including a note I've written about the Kaga foil-figure die. It's full of ugly hyphenations, but contentwise it's OK. So I've put the file on-line here for all you guldgubbar fans.
Update 21 April '08: And here's the final printed version.
[More blog entries about archaeology, Sweden, darkages, vendelperiod; arkeologi, vendeltiden, Östergötland, Linköping.]
aardvarchaeology | May 17, 2007[More blog entries about atheism, religion, christianity, science, god; ateism, religion, kristendom, vetenskap, gud.]
Science can never have an opinion about the existence or non-existence of a god who keeps himself hidden and doesn't interfere with the world. Thus many scientists take the position that god questions are beyond scientific inquiry. In this book, Victor Stenger starts from an interesting observation: no religious people actually believe in a god who keeps himself hidden and doesn't interfere with the world. Quite the contrary, most believe that he has a strong and direct…
aardvarchaeology | May 16, 2007Saturday I slipped on a tux for about the fourth time in my life and went to my little cousin's wedding. It turned out a visit to another world, or at least an alien subculture: corporate suit land. Everybody was a lawyer or a businessperson with a lot more money than I'll ever have, and I found it really hard to connect to people. Their holiday pastimes, the inflection of their speech, even the hairstyles were unfamiliar. It suddenly became clear to me how tightly defined my own social circle actually is in terms of interests and occupations.
So I decided to take a look at who my people are…
aardvarchaeology | May 15, 2007
Samian ware is beautiful reddish amber-coloured pottery, made in moulds and often decorated with figural reliefs. In recent times it has been given the Latin moniker terra sigillata. It was made in peripheral parts of the Roman Empire and rarely moved far beyond its borders. The Swedish finds can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Each find is alone in its respective province: Scania, Västergötland, Östergötland, Gotland...
Last Saturday, Pierre Petersson of the AHIMKAR blog led a guided tour of a 1st Millennium cemetery in Söderåkra parish, Småland, the province between Scania and…
aardvarchaeology | May 15, 2007Time to ask the regulars to push some buttons again. (You do realise that this is just an experiment in behavioristic psychology?)
On average, this blog sees about 90 daily visits from returning readers. If, on average, the blog's regulars visit the site only every second day, this means that I have about 180 steady readers. Yet at the moment, Aard has only been favourited by ten people on Technorati and graded by twelve on Bloggtoppen.
See those buttons below my profile, top left? Go, kids, go! Push the buttons! Push, push, push! Buttons, buttons, buttons! If you do, I will absolve you of…
aardvarchaeology | May 15, 2007Dear Reader, are you into archaeological surveying? Contour mapping, field walking, metal detecting, aerial photography, geophysics, truffle hogs? Then Kate Page-Smith has a conference session for you at the 13th EAA annual meeting in Zadar, Croatia, in September.
Investigating Archaeological Survey
With a tradition stretching back over 300 years, archaeological survey and investigation deserves a definitive place within archaeological and historical research. Its multi-disciplinary approach not only provides greater understanding of sites and their landscapes, but it also offers a…
aardvarchaeology | May 15, 2007[More blog entries about history, humour, engineering, catholicism; historia, humor, teknologi, katolicism.]
The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm is advertising a position as lecturer on the subject of bridge-building, in other words, a Pope.
One of the most ancient honorary titles of the Supreme Pontiff is Pontifex Maximus, literally "Greatest Bridge-maker". Explains Wikipedia:
"The Pontifex Maximus was the high priest of the Ancient Roman College of Pontiffs. This was the most important position in the Ancient Roman religion, open only to patricians, until 254 BC, when a plebeian…
aardvarchaeology | May 14, 2007[More blog entries about archaeology, media, journalism, sciencejournalism; arkeologi, media, journalistik, vetenskapsjournalistik]
As mentioned before here on Aard, archaeology is not a single science but innumerable regional disciplines with little relevance to each other. For instance most archaeologists know absolutely nothing about ancient Egypt, simply because most archaeologists do not work in that country. This can make me sad sometimes, when other scientists go off on international post-docs or collaborate with colleagues in far-off countries. Chemistry is the same everywhere, but…
aardvarchaeology | May 14, 2007I am in mourning for a character in Six Feet Under who died on us last night. The fifth season is airing in Sweden. And I mull over the final scene. Did another character turn into Shaggy from Scooby Doo and act as the dead person's psychopomp on the way to the hereafter? Bizarre, typically bizarre. And very moving to me. It's been a great, great series.
aardvarchaeology | May 11, 2007[More blog entries about skepticism, superstition; skepticism, skepsis, vidskepelse.]
I recently found out that some of Sweden's most influential science journalists like to refer, among themselves, to the Swedish Skeptics Society as "The League of Asperger Patients Against Superstition". It ain't pretty, and it ain't surprising. Skeptics need to learn from this.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) begins its list of Asperger Syndrome symptoms thus:
Qualitative impairment in social interaction;
The presence of restricted, repetitive and stereotyped behaviors…
aardvarchaeology | May 11, 2007
Dear Reader, you have certainly received Nigerian scam e-mail more than once.
"It is obvious that this proposal will come to you as a surprise. This is because we have not met before but I am inspired to sending you this email by the huge fund transfer opportunity that will be of mutual benefit to the two of us.
However, I am Barrister Martins jide, the personal attorney to the late Engr. Suk Hun Wufei flody, a Citizen of Japan, who used to work with Nigerian National Petrolum Co-operatrion (NNPC)."
But have you heard of scambaiting? It's a popular pastime where internet users, protected by…
aardvarchaeology | May 10, 2007[More blog entries about psychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy, anxiety, depression, parenting; psykologi, psykiatri, psykoterapi, ångest, depression, föräldraskap.]
I recently had a book on popular psychology recommended to me and found it absolutely dire. And today's paper reports that most of Sweden's university programs for psychotherapists have been found to be substandard and will be closed down unless they improve dramatically. This has inspired me to write something about late 20th century psychotherapy, a.k.a. humanistic psychology, a movement that has been a background presence for…
aardvarchaeology | May 9, 2007Here's something pretty cool recommended by my amateur archaeologist and fellow honorary Chinese buddy Jerry Helliker: The Hakluyt Society.
"The Hakluyt Society seeks to advance knowledge and education by the publication of scholarly editions of primary records of voyages, travels and other geographical material.
Membership of the Society is strongly recommended to anybody interested in the history of exploration and travel, exploratory voyages, geographical discovery and worldwide cultural encounter."
The Society's latest publication is The Guiana Travels of Robert Schomburgk 1835-1844,…
aardvarchaeology | May 8, 2007The fourteenth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Anthropology 2.0. Check it out! Archaeology and anthropology to take you through the night.
aardvarchaeology | May 8, 2007Say "Swedish psychedelic rock" to a musically inclined foreigner, and chances are they'll think of The Soundtrack of Our Lives, an excellent stonesy outfit from Gothenburg. But in New York, a few people who shop at Other Music may think of Dungen instead.
Dungen ("the Grove") combine psychedelic 70s prog rock with Swedish ethno, fiddle and flute. They just released their third album, Tio Bitar ("Ten Pieces/Songs"), and I've listened it through a few times.
In the age of the mp3 file, albums are once again less important than songs. (In fact, the word "album" originally referred to a physical…