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 | February 8, 2016 One of four grotesque male faces on a 17th century object in the Tre Kronor castle museum. The piece looks like a little baptismal font, but the label says "possibly a kitchen mortar". Neither function seems likely.
Had some quality fun this past weekend.
Dinner at Tbilisis Hörna, a Georgian + Greek + Italian restaurant. Service was slow and unsynched but the food was great. The deep green tarragon soda in a bottle with almost exclusively Georgian script on the labels added to the sense of not being anywhere near Stockholm.
Gig at the Globe Arena's annexe with psychedelic Australian…
aardvarchaeology | February 2, 2016Sweden's bedrock has been entirely abraded by the inland ice. It sanded down the country like a big wood planer, leaving smooth lovely outcrops known as hällar all over the place. This is the main natural prerequisite of Sweden's rich rock art tradition. Most of it dates from the Bronze Age, 1700–500 BC.
Denmark hardly has any visible bedrock, so they don't have much rock art over there, and what they do have tends to be on boulders. It is thus hardly surprising that when you do find figurative art on boulders in Sweden, it tends to be in the provinces closest to Denmark.
Near Asige church in…
aardvarchaeology | January 29, 2016
People who got some very bad ideas drummed into them during the postmodern 1990s are now writing policies for Swedish schools.
New study of twins documents that indeed, pot smokers aren't as smart on average as other people. But most likely they become a) stupid and b) pot smokers because of their social environment. Pot smoking is a symptom, not a cause.
Of course my new pun "The posthuman always rings twice" turned out to have been already invented.
Fiction writer Michael Reaves gets AD and BC mixed up, claims that Akkadian was the lingua franca of the Arabian world until AD 700. Context…
aardvarchaeology | January 25, 2016The Opportunity rover landed on Mars twelve Earth calendar years ago today, and it still works fine after driving ~43 km! This is the farthest any off-planet vehicle has gone so far. Oppy's mate Spirit was mobile on the Red Planet for over five years and then functioned as a stationary science platform for another year before getting killed off by a Martian winter it couldn't avoid. Amazing engineering that keeps working year after year without a technician so much as touching it.
At the moment Oppy is still exploring the rim of Endeavour crater, where it's spent several years. It's in…
aardvarchaeology | January 22, 2016I visited Grödinge church south of Stockholm for the first time Thursday. The occasion was my great aunt Märta's funeral, an event which, though of course sombre, cannot be called tragic. The old lady was always cheerful and friendly, but by the time she passed away she was 104, severely disabled, and according to her many descendants quite tired of it all. As I like to say, I don't fear death but I certainly don't want to become disabled or isolated in my old age. For most of her remarkably long life Märta was in fine shape, and she was never isolated at all.
Grödinge is one of Sweden's many…
aardvarchaeology | January 20, 2016
One reason that it's so hard to talk to believers about alternative medicine: the sharing of alt-med advice is largely a social, friendship-reinforcing activity. It's not just irrelevant to believers, but quite rude, to question the medical efficacy of someone's advice. This is not the case when you're talking about tax forms or sewing machines.
Amazes me to think how varied and nutritious food we have in rich countries. All year round I can pretty much afford to eat whatever I want. And I'm not anywhere near being rich.
I'm happy to do stuff for people. Just don't expect me to remember if…
aardvarchaeology | January 19, 2016A year ago I took a look at the surrounding landscape here at Sb, investigating which of the blogs were active – defined as which ones had seen an entry during the month up to 24 Jan '15. Now I've looked at the month up to 17 Jan '16. The result isn't great. Four blogs have gone quiet and one has re-awoken, bringing the total down to 16. Not one new blog has been added to the roster in the past year. You may wonder what the Sb Overlords are thinking about this. I sure do.
Here are the currently active ScienceBlogs (apart from the one you're reading). Check them out and drop them a few…
aardvarchaeology | January 12, 2016Fornvännen 2015:2 is now on-line on Open Access. A reminder: the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters who publish the journal decided on a six-month delay in order to protect the viability of the journal's paper version.
Evert Baudou & Ingmar Jansson on Leo Klejn’s opinions of Mats Malmer’s work. Legends talking about legend talking about legend.
Per Nilsson & Anna Sörman on a new Bronze Age metalworking find from Östergötland.
Ole Stilborg & Claes Pettersson on the poor quality of Early Modern fortifications at Jönköping.
Göran Tagesson & Annika Jeppson on Early Modern tiled…
aardvarchaeology | January 11, 2016
2015 was an amazing year for scifi movies. The Martian, Fury Road, Force Awakens. And I hear Ex Machina is good too?
Tess Parks's "Life Is But A Dream" sounds exactly like Mazzy Star.
Tolkien Society flea market / fundraiser, late 80s. I'm in my larper tunic and baggy-sleeved shirt. An old lady loudly asks her friend, "Was that a boy in a dress?"
Jack the Ripper was into one night stabs.
Signed off on Jr's first ID. "You are the bows from which your children / as living arrows are sent forth."
Deezer took a look at my druggy favourites, then played me "White Rabbit" and "Eight Miles High".…
aardvarchaeology | January 9, 2016 Our kitchen window
When we go out for dinner my wife wants to sample everyone's dishes. And I want to make sure no food is wasted. So we both end up sampling everyone's dishes.
Danish metal detectorists refer to their finds as "cousins". "Can somebody please ID this cousin?"
I'm a typical Swedish atheist. I'm uncomfortable with people having strong feelings about religion. Pro or con.
When reading about 17th century Swedish historians in the Rudebeck vein I can understand that they would uncritically repeat whatever a trusted authority had said. But I'm amazed by their willingness to just…
aardvarchaeology | January 7, 2016 The Institutet radio show: 2015 Enlighteners of the Year
The Swedish Skeptics have announced their annual awards for 2015.
The Enlightener of the Year award is given to a radio show on Swedish Broadcasting's channel 3, Institutet, "The Institute". Show hosts Karin Gyllenklev and Jesper Rönndahl use humour to reach out with science content to a wide audience.
The Deceiver of the Year anti-award is given to a neighbouring show of the aforementioned, channel 1's Kaliber, "Calibre". They get this doubtful honour for a show where they suggested that vaccination against HPV, Human Papilloma…
aardvarchaeology | January 3, 2016John asked me to create a permanent movie recommendations forum in the shape of a comment thread. Et voilà!
aardvarchaeology | January 1, 2016Here are the ten boardgames I played the most during 2015. The year's total was 78 different boardgames.
Saboteur (2004) *
Istanbul (2014) *
Love Letter (2012) *
Manhattan (1994) *
6 nimmt / Category 5 (1994)
Elysium (2015) *
El Grande (1995) *
Magic: the Gathering (1993)
Province (2014) *
Boss Monster (2013) *
These are mostly short games that you can play repeatedly in one evening. Istanbul, Elysium, El Grande and Boss Monster are a bit longer. Another long game that I played a lot was Galaxy Trucker. All are highly recommended!
Dear Reader, what was your biggest boardgaming hit in 2015?…
aardvarchaeology | December 30, 2015
Andy Weir's The Martian. My single best read this year!
Here are my best reads in English during 2015. My total was 55 books and 16 of them were e-books. Find me at Goodreads!
The Summing Up. W. Somerset Maugham 1938. An old writer and traveller looks back on his life and turns out to have settled upon pretty much the same philosophy as myself.
Live and Let Die. (James Bond #2.) Ian Fleming 1954. Short and neat action novel.
The Martian. Andy Weir 2014. Robinson Crusoe on Mars! With science! And jokes!
Going Solo. Roald Dahl 1986. Youth memoir of a WW2 fighter pilot.
Tour de Lovecraft -…
aardvarchaeology | December 29, 2015I’ve been blogging for a bit more than ten years now, having started on 16 December, and today Aard turns nine! I was inspired to begin blogging by my wife who started in October 2005. She worked as a news reporter at the time, and journalists were early adopters in Swedish blogging. I was doing research on small grants and applying for uni jobs.
In late 2005 we were living happily in a three-room apartment in a former council tenement, my son had just started school and my daughter was a baby. Things have changed a bit over these ten years as we've moved into middle age: both kids are now…
aardvarchaeology | December 23, 2015 Toby Martin 2015, The Cruciform Brooch and Anglo-Saxon England
This is the definitive study of English cruciform brooches. Now and then a study comes along that is so comprehensive, and so well argued, that nobody will ever be likely to even try to eclipse it. It is my firm belief that future work on English cruciform brooches will strictly be footnotes to Toby Martin. He has collected and presented a huge material, asked interesting questions of it, and dealt with it competently using state-of-the-art methods. I'd be happy to hand this book as a model to any archaeologist anywhere who…
aardvarchaeology | December 22, 2015
Most story boardgames don't let you do much tactically to influence the results or win. I've reported previously on what a game of Arkham Horror (2005) can be like. And I've played Betrayal At House On The Hill (2004) quite a lot. But the storiest of all story boardgames I've played is Tales Of The Arabian Nights (2009). Me and my friend Roland played it Sunday, which took us 22 rounds and about 4.5 hours.
Roland was Ali Baba and finally managed to win, which was no mean feat given that it's hard to get the damn game to end at all. You need 20 points to win. But we had 40 points each at the…
aardvarchaeology | December 21, 2015
Wearing my early-90s Tolkien Society outfit for tonight's Viking yule feast with the students. Been so long since I wore it that I'd forgotten where I'd put it. It was neatly stacked in the back corner of my closet's top shelf.
I'm slow on the uptake. It took me long to realise that the subway gets me through town faster than does the airport bus. It took me even longer to realise that this is somehow true in both directions.
Prepping students' yuletide Viking feast is exactly like at a Tolkien Society event c. 1990!
No more teaching this year. Only one lecture left in January, then a spring…
aardvarchaeology | December 20, 2015Vague and sweeping spoilers below.
The Force Awakens is fully on a level with the original three films, as far as I remember them. These are four good scifi action movies. The new one is actually better in being much more inclusive of women and non-Europid people. It's quite a loving re-visit to the original material.
My main complaints with the new one are that
The tempo is too uniform and too high
No time seems to pass between scenes, with the main characters never even having a change of clothes
People need no training to operate star ships and military weaponry
The story is a clear and…
aardvarchaeology | December 16, 2015Together with Dorthe Wille-Jørgensen, Curator at the Danish Castle Centre in Vordingborg, I'm organising a paper session on Medieval castles at the 22nd annual meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists. This is in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, 31 August to 4 September 2016. Here’s our session abstract:
Lifestyles At Medieval Castles: Current Methodological Approaches
This session gather researchers working with the way people lived in Medieval castles. It aims to showcase the best current methodology to excavate, sample and study the culture layers in and around castles. This…