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 | January 31, 2007
Mike Parker Pearson and team have excavated part of a huge Neolithic settlement at Durrington Walls above the Salisbury plain, not far from Stonehenge. Finds are abundant and suggest that the place was a seasonal ceremonial feasting site. Says MPP, "We're talking Britain's first free festival. It's part of attracting a labour force - throwing a big party". And you know what that labour force did? Yep, among other tasks they pulled massive blocks of rock on sledges from Wales to Wiltshire and built something that still stands after several millennia.
I wish the Neolithic record in the Lake…
aardvarchaeology | January 30, 2007
Dining with polyglot friends (he's a Sinologist who also works with Georgian and Basque and speaks a bewildering variety of Asian languages, she interprets Mongolian and speaks the most exquisite Swedish), my wife and I learned something about Mongolian cuisine and cursing.
Mongolia has kind of a heavy-metal reputation. I mean, leave them to their own devices and they'll conquer Eurasia. But as it turns out, these people cook really bland food and use extremely low-key expletives.
Salt is the only spice in regular use. A typical meal may consist of a pound of boiled goat and a bowl of…
aardvarchaeology | January 29, 2007
Marika Mägi, my old co-student from grad school, is head of the archaeology department at Tallinn university in Estonia. She's organising a conference titled Rank, Gender and Society around the Baltic 400-1400 AD on 23-27 May in Kuressaare on the island of Saaremaa. Interested scholars are welcome to present papers, and Marika tells me that the registration deadline has been extended to 1 March. Here's a flier with registration details.
I'm tempted to go. Saaremaa is sort of Gotland's twin sister and it's the kind of place I'd most likely never visit unless prompted by a conference. And the…
aardvarchaeology | January 28, 2007On Thursday 1 February at 18:30 I'm giving a talk at the Town Museum of Norrköping. The subject is my ongoing research into the political geography of late 1st Millennium Östergötland, or simply put, My Quest for the Ancient Kings. Entry is SEK 60. Hope to meet blog readers there!
[More blog entries about archaeology, Sweden; arkeologi, Östergötland, Norrköping.]
aardvarchaeology | January 27, 2007
Dear Reader, I've just passed a lovely hour skiing on the golf course, and I am very happy.
It's -6 centigrade, loads of snow and Mr Sun is shining from a blue sky, accompanied by his pale-countenanced Sister Moon. People and dogs were out in force and we all smiled at each other as we met in the tracks.
With my trusty handheld, I snapped the above pic, and it also played me wonderful music: Norway's finest rock band, the Brimstone Solar Radiation Band; those lovely eclectic Philadelphians, Maggi, Pierce & E.J.; some jazzy hippie stylings from Chrysalis with the divine Nancy Nairn on the…
aardvarchaeology | January 26, 2007As I've observed before, enlisting bloggers to do marketing offers some interesting possibilities and limitations. Unlike the case with mainstream media, you can choose exactly which person will receive an advance copy of your product (preferably someone who will like it), and the blogger is likely to feel flattered that you even took her seriously enough to contact her. A blog often also has a tightly defined readership, so by choosing the right blogger you can usually reach a very specific target market. The main drawback is of course that of readership: you can be reasonably sure to get a…
aardvarchaeology | January 25, 2007Most archaeologists work with rescue excavations for land development, "contract archaeology". And because of the Field-Archaeological Paradox, operative in all Western countries with strong legal protection for archaeological sites, they get to dig a lot of really nondescript things. It's not Tut-ankh-amen's tomb every day, kids. This is one of the reasons that I do my best to stay out of contract archaeology.
One of the types of ancient monument that Swedish contract archaeologists get to dig quite a lot, but which is seen by many pretty much with heartfelt loathing, is colloquially known…
aardvarchaeology | January 24, 2007
One of the founding fathers of Norwegian archaeology and place-name scholarship was Oluf Rygh (1833-1899). In 1875, he became Scandinavia's first professor of archaeology. One of the most enduring parts of his legacy is his 1885 book Norske Oldsager, "Norwegian Antiquities" (re-issued in 1999). Not because many read either the Norwegian or the French text in the book any more: Norske Oldsager is used to this day for its illustrations. Hundreds of beautiful drawings of exquisite finds, all reproduced through the late 19th century's signature printing method, wood engraving.
If I want to talk…
aardvarchaeology | January 23, 2007John over at Stranger Fruit had a post recently on his most popular entries. Summing up, he found that controversial issues in science and religion drew the most attention. I've had a look at my Google Analytics as well, checking out the data for my old site since the present one has been on-line for less than a month so far.
In order to get anything interesting out of the exercise, I had to disregard two hugely popular entry categories: a) blog carnival hostings, b) entries with sex-related words in them. As I've mentioned before repeatedly, any post mentioning words relating to sex, porn or…
aardvarchaeology | January 21, 2007
I am an admirer of all things psychedelic in art and music. My wife recently bought a second-hand copy of Disney's animated feature film Dumbo -- dubbed in Finnish of all languages. But we're a multilingual family and the kids are used to someone always gabbling incomprehensibly, so they didn't mind.
I just passed by the TV, hearing a men's choir singing in Finnish -- and then I caught a glimpse of the accompanying images. Bad trip man, baaad trip. Psychedelic multicolour elephants! Morphing in and out of shape, forming incandescent moiré patterns, sliding across the field of vision and into…
aardvarchaeology | January 20, 2007The Anthropology Review Database currently contains 2667 reviews and citations, almost exclusively of books/films/CDs on social anthropology. A cool feature of the site is that they offer review copies to volunteer reviewers: currently there are 162 titles available. So if you feel that you would have something intelligent to say about a book on Japanese American beauty pageants, one on political life in Cairo's New Quarters, or a film about the Karen people of Burma -- then get thee to the web site and sign up for duty.
Thanks to Howard Williams for the tip.
aardvarchaeology | January 19, 2007Scandinavian animal art starts in the late 4th century AD and goes through a long series of innovative styles until it's abandoned in the 12th century and a naive version of Continental Romanesque takes over.
One of the weirdest, funniest and most abstruse varieties of animal art is what Bernhard Salin called Style I. It was invented in Jutland about AD 450 and flourished for less than a century in its South Scandinavian central areas. Wilhelm Holmquist characterised it as the "style of dismemberment", and that pretty much tells you what it's about. Most Style I artwork comes down to us as…
aardvarchaeology | January 18, 2007A gifted friend of mine suffers from a continuous psychological dilemma. He wants to be more productive and become somewhat famous, but he's pretty lazy and there isn't anything in particular he really wants to do. So, despite being hugely talented, he often feels inadequate. His problem is that he wants to have done things, but he doesn't want to do them.
We share many characteristics. I'm also driven by an internal imperative to be productive, and I also crave the appreciation of my peers. (I mean, look at me here, blogging.) The main difference is that I am, without having done anything to…
aardvarchaeology | January 18, 2007One of the journals I edit periodically receives letters from an old man in the country. They are written in an old-style hand with many quaint expressions of respect, and concern the price of subscription and back issues. The letters are clearly products of an old brain stuck in an infinite loop.
All are almost identically phrased and keep coming regardless of how we reply. It looks as though this gentleman uses a master copy of the letter to rattle off a new one every time he starts to feel the need for subscription information, but that he is unable to remember that he has already had that…
aardvarchaeology | January 17, 2007British author and elderblogger Michael Allen, a.k.a. the Grumpy Old Bookman, has just released Lucius the Club. It's a new 48-page crime story available as a free CC-licensed PDF and a €4 chapbook from Lulu. I haven't read it yet, but I've enjoyed his other recent fiction very much and I follow his blog on a daily basis.
Get the file and read a few pages! What have you got to lose?
Update 21 March: Read it yesterday on my handheld. Excellent work, evoking a very English world of post-war kitchen-sink noir.
[More blog entries about books, crime, creativecommons; böcker, deckare.]
aardvarchaeology | January 17, 2007
Dear Reader, welcome to the Four Stone Hearth blog carnival -- in science land! 4SH is about anthropology in the widest (American) sense: nothing human is alien to us, from Homo habilis bones via Early Medieval metalworking debris to on-line gaming subcultures.
Aardvarchaeology is my new blog, started only a few weeks ago. Before, I blogged at Salto sobrius, where you may have read entries about archaeology during 2006.
Anthro scholars are rare here at Scienceblogs, most of the others being specialised in natural sciences like biology. But I feel at home here. For one thing, my opinion is…
aardvarchaeology | January 17, 2007A recurring theme in my blogging of the past year (e.g. here: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4) has been that a degree in Scandinavian archaeology (BA, MA or PhD) is almost entirely useless from a career perspective. The reason is that our labour market is over-populated at all levels, from the lowly shovel-wielder to the august professor. In my past posts, I've documented this in various ways.
Since getting my degree in 2003, I've applied for twelve academic jobs in Scandinavia, all requiring a PhD in archaeology. A number of temporary jobs have also been given discreetely to people already within departments…
aardvarchaeology | January 15, 2007Coturnix over at A Blog Around the Clock announces that the 2006 Science Blogging Anthology has now been published. The title is The Open Laboratory. Very apt! As mentioned here before, the volume contains a piece by yours truly. Get it while it's fresh!Zivkovic, Bora. 2007. The Open Laboratory. The best writing on science blogs 2006. Chapel Hill, NC: Lulu. 336 pp.[More blog entries about books, science, lulu; böcker, vetenskap.]
aardvarchaeology | January 15, 2007The British Museum has purchased a set of 7th century golden garnet-studded sword hilt mounts from a metal detectorist who found them at Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, England, in 2002.
It's a funny find: the hilt has clearly been deposited in one piece with all the mounts held together by the tang of the sword, but there's no trace of the blade and no evidence for any ploughed-out grave. It seems to be a well-documented case of a contextless find. Unless there's a settlement there that isn't mentioned in the BM press release.
The interlace decoration looks non-animal-art from the pics and is…
aardvarchaeology | January 15, 2007Reader "Chez Jake" suggests that I might write a few "basics of archaeology" posts like other Sb bloggers are doing. I'd be happy to! Dear Reader, please tell me something basic you'd like me to explain about archaeology that isn't answered well by Wikipedia.