Martin Rundkvist
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.
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Posts by this author
September 16, 2013
23 years ago I started my undergraduate studies, and my hugely inspiring main teacher was Göran Burenhult, who had written our main textbook. Now I'm teaching a very similar freshman archaeology course for the first time, and the main textbook is again one written by Göran Burenhult. This two-…
September 14, 2013
This bug in OpenOffice / LibreOffice has been with me for years and years. You open a file, you delete it while open, you close LibreOffice -- and then LibreOffice will henceforth tell you eeeevery time you start the program that it tried and failed to recover that file. But I found a bug fix.…
September 11, 2013
Though I really enjoyed my late 70s childhood visits to Disneyland and Disneyworld, I am no friend of disnification, and I've always seen the Paris Disneyland as a bit of a joke. But my mom wanted to treat my kids to a visit last week, and so I came along too.
The Paris Disneyland has five sections…
September 2, 2013
I'm not saying that my mind is particularly august.
First Aid Kit rule. And are godless: "There's one life and it's this life and it's beautiful"
After listening to Ken & Robin's latest podcast episode I did some reading on Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais. The mind boggles at the idea of a…
August 30, 2013
Recently I blogged about historians of science who chronicle scientific debates of the past neutrally and leave it to the reader to find out who (if anyone) turned out to be right in the end. This approach pisses me off because I'm a scientist and I believe that the main point of such debates –…
August 30, 2013
I'm weeks late to the party here. If you pay attention to atheist issues you've probably heard that a recent major meta-study* concludes that at the population level, atheists are a bit smarter than religious folks (mainly Protestant Americans and English in this case). Not dramatically so, but in…
August 19, 2013
I like reading about the history of science, including my own discipline. But there is one kind of history of science that annoys me hugely, and that's the knowledge relativist kind. A knowledge relativist historian of science will chronicle a scientific debate of the past but make no comment on…
August 9, 2013
After a languid summer of reading, swimming and some work I'm gearing up for an intense time with a lot of fun stuff during September and October.
Accompany Junior's class to Sevenoaks and London for music camp.
For the second time, review grant applications for the main science funding body of a…
August 5, 2013
The people who owned my mom's summer house in the 60s and 70s threw household waste into the sea from the main dock. And they methodically filled their empty wine bottles with water and sank them there. (If you toss an empty bottle into the sea it floats away.) The water's only about 2.5 m deep at…
August 3, 2013
I have a problem with the term Viking Age. And it's not likely that I will ever get satisfaction. Because I am a Scandy archaeologist, and the term is owned by UK historians and the general English-speaking public.
The three-ages system was established by C.J. Thomsen in his 1821 book Ledetraad. It…
July 31, 2013
Sad case in my municipality of date rape made worse by fathering fail. 20-y-o guy coerces 15-y-o girl to blow him by threatening to tell her dad they're together. Good dads are who you run to when somebody tries to blackmail you.
A publicist offers me to review the latest in a popular series of…
July 30, 2013
Come September I'm scheduled to fulfil a major life goal of mine after over 15 years of impatient waiting. I'm going to teach Scandy Archaeology 101 for the first time, at the University of Umeå!*
The fall semester is divided into four modules of which I am head teacher for three: 1) Introduction,…
July 29, 2013
My Wulfheodenas homie David Huggins asked me a good question. ”Shield maidens! True or False? Okay, that was a bit general, but female 'warrior' graves, symbolic or otherwise?”. I take this to mean “Were there female warriors in Northern Europe AD 500-1000?”
Let's start by examining why everyone…
July 28, 2013
I feel like blogging but there's not much going on over the summer and I don't know what to write about. Toss me a bone, Dear Reader! Suggest a topic, ask me a question, gimme a link!
July 17, 2013
Smørenge is one of the sites on Bornholm that keeps yielding mid-1st-millennium gold mini-figurines. But in addition to the 2D representations on embossed gold foil known as guldgubber, an artisan employed by the magnate family at Smørenge also made nude 3D figurines. The fifth of these was found…
July 12, 2013
Here's a fun case of me not anticipating an imminent technological development, not thinking that last centimetre of far enough. In July of 2007, six years ago, I wrote:
Lately I have come to think of books as computer devices, combining the functions of screen and backup medium. All texts these…
July 8, 2013
The Stone of Sälna is a runestone (U 323) erected about AD 1000 at Sälna hamlet where a major road crossed Hargsån stream in Skånela parish, Uppland. (This is not far from where Arlanda airport now sprawls.) None of this is unusual. But the stone's great height, its inscription and its later fate…
July 1, 2013
Wait a minute. Did I just win my first competition for an advertised teaching job? In ten years of applying for them? I kind of feel the bedrock under my feet slipping.
A chapter of my life ended on 12 June. 13½ years ago I began taking my son to daycare. Ever since, I have taken my kids to…
June 28, 2013
Contract archaeology is the current term for what used to be called rescue archaeology: documenting archaeological sites slated for destruction through land development. (Swedes sometimes fall for a false friend and translate an old word of ours, exploateringsarkeologi, into “exploitation…
June 27, 2013
On 10 June I blogged about some grisly finds from Cliffs End in Kent which to my mind indicate eight centuries of human sacrifice during the Late Bronze and Iron Ages. I invited colleagues at Wessex Archaeology who did the dig to comment, and Chief Osteoarcheologist Jacqueline McKinley kindly sent…
June 20, 2013
This is priceless. There's a line of scented candles and other spa treatment paraphernalia called Voluspa. Volu-spa, get it? Now, the firm shows no awareness of what their chosen name means. Völuspá is a long Old Norse poem in the Poetic Edda, dealing with the creation and eventual destruction (and…
June 18, 2013
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…
June 17, 2013
Despite loud (and in my opinion, well argued) opposition to the Swedish restrictions on metal detector use by honest amateurs, our authorities are sadly not coming round to anything resembling the Danish legislation that works so well.
My friend and fieldwork collaborator Tobias Bondeson is a…
June 10, 2013
British Archaeology #131 (July/August) has a feature by Pippa Bradley that caught my interest. It's about a Wessex Archaeology dig in 2004-05 at Cliffs End farm in Thanet, a piece of north-east Kent that was an island up until the 16th century when silting finished connecting it to mainland England…
June 3, 2013
Historiska media is a publishing house in Lund. In recent years they have been putting out pop-sci guide books about Medieval Sweden, province by province. I've reviewed the volumes about Södermanland and Uppland provinces here. And now my friend and Fornvännen co-editor Elisabet Regner has written…
June 1, 2013
Reading Kerstin Ekman I'm struck by how complicated a relationship her characters have to social class. And by how oblivious I have largely been to it through my life. I've always known that there are people with less money and power than my circle. And that there are those with more money and…
May 23, 2013
For months I subscribed to too many podcasts, and so wasn't listening to a lot of music. But lately I've made an effort to rectify that. Here's what I've been bopping to.
Apples In Stereo – Travellers In Space And Time (2010). Lots of vocoder!
David Bowie – Pin Ups (1973). Glam covers of 60s…
May 20, 2013
Last winter I was amazed by the poor upkeep afforded to buildings in central Marrakech. I spent part of last week in fascinating Istanbul, and there it was again: plentiful ruins of recent buildings in the middle of busy shopping and hotel districts. Istanbul is in even worse shape than Marrakech.…