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 7, 2007[More blog entries about archaeology, runes, Minnesota, kensington, middleages; arkeologi, runor, medeltiden, usa.]
The Kensington runestone is a 19th century fake from Minnesota. It purports to be a monument left behind by a Scandinavian expedition in the 14th century, but uses anachronistic turns of phrase and runic characters typical of 19th century popular culture. The runestone is nevertheless touted as authentic by enthusiastic local amateur scholars.
"8 Geats and 22 Norwegians on acquisition venture from Vinland far to the west We had traps by 2 shelters one day's travel to the north…
aardvarchaeology | May 6, 2007I'm a big fan of Pandora.com, a smart on-line radio station. It first asks you to name a number of songs, albums and artists that you like -- you can actually start with a single song. Then it figures out (with the aid of a huge database where music has been classified in detail according to a large number of parameters) what other stuff you might like -- and plays it to you. As you rate the songs it throws at you, it gets a better and better idea of what to give you next.
But us Swedes are out of luck now. Because of a huge and sudden increase in the licencing rates Pandora has to pay, they'…
aardvarchaeology | May 6, 2007Wednesday 9 May will see the Four Stone Hearth blog carnival appear in all its archaeo/anthro glory at Anthropology 2.0. If you have read or blogged anything good on those themes lately, then make sure to submit it to Marc Hebert ASAP. (Yes, you can submit stuff you've found on other people's blogs.)
aardvarchaeology | May 6, 2007[More blog entries about memory, psychology, loss; minnet, psykologi, förluster.]
Here's a thought that's been floating around my head for a while. Let's look at the world as a stage play. Turns out there's a difference between a) our memories of dramatic events, b) our ideas about scenery and dramatis personae.
I spent a finite number of days in my childhood home at Vikingavägen 28. Large, but finite. I do remember events that took place there. But I also carry around a model of the place in my head. Closing my eyes, I can wander around the house and yard as it looked in, say, 1980. The…
aardvarchaeology | May 4, 2007
First there was Orkut. Then Friendster. Then MySpace (ugleee). Now, lured by my homie Howard Williams and sundry SciBlings, I have registered on yet another social networking site: Facebook. I am currently a sad presence there with hardly any friends. Feel free to befriend my digital representation!
aardvarchaeology | May 4, 2007[More blog entries about archaeology, religion, vikings, vikingperiod, Scandinavia; arkeologi, religion, vikingar, vikingatiden.]
Thursday morning I stopped by the Royal Library in Stockholm and read a paper by Johan Callmer in the great big symposium volume concluding the Vägar till Midgård project ("Roads to Middle-earth"). I was mainly there to check what he had said about the above 8th century brooch from Åland, apparently depicting a headless quadruped. But I also found a couple of really good paragraphs on another issue toward the end. Unfortunately the camera in my handheld computer…
aardvarchaeology | May 3, 2007As I've mentioned before, quartz is a tricky material to make tools of. Quartz-tool production waste is very common on prehistoric sites in most of Sweden where flint is rare.
I just thought I should share one of the least attractive entries in the inventory of the Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm. This material was collected in 1971. I love it in all its absurdity.
31110. Botkyrka parish, Fittja farmstead 1:1, 2:1, 3:1, registered site 280
Workshop find? Quartz quarry? C. 70 kg collected quartz, of which some may be worked.
Seventy kilograms!
aardvarchaeology | May 3, 2007
Using my friend Stefan's home-made illuminated drawing pulpit (tried & true), I've traced a photograph of the new-found Kaga foil-figure die to make it easier to understand the motif. The drawing will appear in a short paper in the summer issue of Fornvännen.
aardvarchaeology | May 2, 2007[More blog entries about jewellery, archaeology, Sweden, migrationperiod, darkages; smycken, folkvandringstiden, arkeologi, Linköping.]
A few weeks back, myself and the Gothenburg metal detectorist team found some fine things in Kaga parish, Östergötland, as recounted here. One is a piece of an early 6th century, Migration Period, bronze, equal-armed relief brooch in Salin's Style I. It was originally probably gilded and decorated with niello.
My dear colleague Bente Magnus is an authority on these rare brooches. She has lent me a photograph of a complete specimen that must be very similar to…
aardvarchaeology | May 1, 2007[More blog entries about archaeology, history, Scandinavia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway; arkeologi, historia, Skandinavien, Danmark, Norge, Sverige.]
Archaeology consists of a myriad of weakly interconnected regional and temporal sub-disciplines. My work in Östergötland is largely irrelevant to a scholar in Lapland and entirely so to one in Tokyo. Larger interregional syntheses are rare and tend to be read mainly by undergraduates who have yet to select a specialty.
Now, imagine someone outside of Scandinavia, who speaks none of our languages, but who wants to approach our prehistoric…
aardvarchaeology | April 30, 2007
Atheist bloggers have long had the Carnival of the Godless to publicise their work. Then came MoJoey's Atheist Blogroll. And now there's the Humanist Symposium carnival, whose first instalment came on-line the day before yesterday. If God hadn't wanted you to have contact with other atheists, then he clearly wouldn't have made all these blogging venues.
Although an atheist, I rarely feel moved to blog about my unfaith. You see, in Sweden, atheism is no big deal. Expressions of religious faith are the exception here, not the other way around. I believe in no gods, but nor do I believe in…
aardvarchaeology | April 30, 2007Since the 1980s there has been a post-modernist movement in Western European archaeology where a strong influence from lit-crit, sociology and Continental philosophy has been felt. This has led, among other things, to radical relativism in some scholars, and to a tendency for archaeology departments to harbour and publish work that a) does not treat the archaeological record, b) does not aim at finding out what it was like living in the past.
I have criticised these tendencies at several occasions, as in this piece: "Archaeology is good fun but unimportant to most people". Not long ago, the…
aardvarchaeology | April 28, 2007Just a note about yesterday's metal detecting at the Baggensstäket battlefield. We worked for less than four hours, but I got lucky and ran into the burnt remains of wooden fortifications on a seaward slope. Loads of nails and spikes in one place, and thanks to the fire, some were in pristine shape. Beautiful smithwork: octagonal cross-sections, square heads with bevelled edges -- all clearly taken from army stores (or the royal shipwharfs in town?) when news of the Russian approach arrived. Also charcoal and fire-cracked stone. I'd like to see an excavation there.
Bo Knarrström had modded…
aardvarchaeology | April 28, 2007Yay, Aard's finally got a Google PageRank! Instead of rising gradually over the past four months, it's been zero until it suddenly jumped to six out of ten.
The hapless porn surfers are already arriving in droves. Welcome guys! "Teeny teeny porn porn sex sex big booty", everyone!
aardvarchaeology | April 27, 2007[More blog entries about archaeology, Sweden, business, obituary; arkeologi, uppdragsarkeologi, dödsruna.]
Dr. Roger Blidmo died of a heart attack yesterday. I just talked to a long-time employee of his who confirmed the rumour. The guy was only 56. My heart goes out to his family.
Roger was one of Swedish archaeology's most famous/notorious participants, known since two decades for his uncompromising fight for private-sector contract archaeology. The whole business will take years to adjust to him not being there anymore. County archaeologists will suddenly have only half the tender-process…
aardvarchaeology | April 26, 2007As you may have noticed, founding father Kambiz has been very busy lately, and his brainchild the Four Stone Hearth blog carnival has not quite received the attention it needs. Now, I'm not as good as Kambiz at web design, but I'm OK at long-running repetitive administrative tasks. So I've joined the K as co-admin of the carnival.
Before I start mucking around with the carnival's site, I need some volunteer carnival hosts. Anybody with a blog and an interest in archaeology and anthropology (in the various senses of this word) is very welcome to host. Remember: submitting entries to a popular…
aardvarchaeology | April 26, 2007[More blog entries about archaeology, Sweden, history; arkeologi, Nacka, historia.]
Long-time Dear Readers may remember the visit I paid last May to the wooded Skogsö hills where the Battle of Baggensstäket was fought in 1719. Bo Knarrström, Tomas Englund and the others on their project team are now back on the site with their metal detectors, finding more and more objects from the battle. This time, I'm joining the team for two days. Tuesday, they were visited by celebrated military historian Peter Englund.
A battle fought with firearms seeds an area thickly with evidence for what has taken…
aardvarchaeology | April 26, 2007OMG, how stupid! And I ain't foolin'.
The other day my SciBling Shelley at Retrospectacle got nastygrammed by Wiley InterScience for reproducing part of a figure from a paper in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture! Shelley had provided due reference to where she had found the figure and used it to discuss the contents of that paper. Fair use.
Wiley InterScience describe themselves as "a leading international resource for quality content promoting discovery across the spectrum of scientific, technical, medical and professional endeavors". Yeah, sure, and they apparently want to…
aardvarchaeology | April 25, 2007[More blog entries about archaeology, Sweden, vikingperiod, vikings, Denmark, Germany; arkeologi, vikingar, vikingatiden, Tyskland, Danmark.]
I made one of my infrequent visits to the University of Stockholm campus today. After getting my PhD in 2003 I was really tired of the place, and I've pretty much stayed away since apart from a few vivas (Sw. disputationer). But today there was an international seminar on Viking Period towns, so I went. Weird to think it's been almost 17 years since I enrolled.
Turned out a team from Schleswig, people working with Haithabu, are here to meet people…
aardvarchaeology | April 25, 2007I've just sheepishly realised that I did something wrong four months ago when I installed the script code for the hit counters I use for this site. Forget anything I may have said about this blog's readership. It's way, way higher than I thought. In fact, it pretty much doubled the moment I moved to Scienceblogs.
My old site had an average daily readership of 235 uniques in December. Aard currently has about 520. And the old site is still attracting about 140 uniques daily. Like, wow!