aardvarchaeology

The European Council of Skeptical Organizations (ECSO) has set up an on-line forum. Explains ECSO chairman Amardeo Sarma, "The purpose of this forum is to promote discussion with ECSO and other Skeptics Organisations. So if you have some question or a suggestion to a particular Skeptics…

The forty-third Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Paddy K's Swedish Extravaganza. Archaeology and anthropology, and all regulated by the rota system! The Rota System, from the Old Church Slavic word for "ladder" or "staircase", was a system of collateral succession practiced (though…

Looking closer at this cover of a Chinese pirate edition of Disney's 1937 animated feature Snow White, we find a couple of fine Engrish phrases. "Latinum Edition" is pretty good. But wouldn't you agree that "Still the Fairest of the Mall" takes the cake?

It's been almost a year since the last de-lurk. Aard currently has over 150 returning visitors daily (out of about 800 uniques). Since not everyone checks in every day, this translates to several hundred -- possibly a thousand -- regulars who read the blog at least once a week. So, everybody,…

Back in February I showed you some pix of abandoned tree houses at Djurhamn. One of them had a computer, just like my son once reported visiting a tree house with a typewriter. I've spent the past three days metal detecting in the same area, falsifying our working hypothesis that there would be…

With my buddies Kjell Andersson and Lasse Winroth, and supported by the amazing Ehrsson brothers Rune & Tore, I've been back metal detecting around the Harbour of the Sheaf Kings for two days. Last summer I did some work along the current shores of the harbour site, covering available flat…

Two entries of Afarensis's have inspired me to set something down that I've been thinking about for a long time. Afarensis mentions a forthcoming paper by Lyman, VanPool & O'Brien that will be published in the Journal of Archaeological Science. They're looking at change in arrowhead types over…

I have become increasingly fascinated with place names. The other day I bought my second copy of Svenskt ortnamnslexikon, "Swedish place-name encyclopedia" (ed. Mats Wahlberg 2003). One often-consulted copy is in my office, and I've missed it many times -- at home while reading or conversing, and…

Asked a reader, "There are many, many academic bloggers out there feverishly blogging about their areas of interest. Still, there are many, many more academics who don't. So, why do you blog ..." As I've noted before, I blog because it makes me feel like a ten-foot diamond on a Christmas tree. To…

Played a fun card game with a somewhat off-colour name today: Spank the Monkey from 2003. The object of the game is literally to catch a monkey and whack its little hairy behind. Why? Because all the players are employees at a junk yard, and the monkey's being a nuisance. It's built itself a tower…

The 43rd instalment of the Four Stone Hearth anthro & archaeo blogging carnival will come on-line at Paddy K's Swedish Extravaganza on Wednesday 18 June. Send links to good recent anthroblogging to him! It needn't be your own stuff: submit all the goodies you've read lately. The next open…

I've made two archaeological field interventions today. First I seeded a site with finds, then I got some finds out of another site. Fieldwalking back in March, I found a grindstone and some knapped quartz at a Bronze Age site in Botkyrka parish. Taking their positions with GPS, I've filed a brief…

Lately I've been playing more board games, thanks to gaming friends moving to my area, and also to my son and his buddies reaching an age where they can understand and enjoy games. I have a number of good board games from the 70s, 80s and 90s, and the newest one in the house is Blokus from 2000.…

At the request of Aard regular and archaeologist Mathias Blobel in Freiburg, Germany, here's a summary of a recent paper in Swedish. In Fornvännen 2007:3, husband & wife historians of archaeology Drs Ãsa Gillberg and Ola W. Jensen note that there are currently ongoing attempts to train dogs to…

[More blog entries about fiction, timetravel, sf, sciencefiction; sf, sciencefiction, tidsresor, litteratur, novell] Alvin Gavel just graduated from high school. (He's the son of Aard regular Kai who keeps the bilingual Pointless Anecdotes blog.) This young man has to my knowledge grown up entirely…

The micro-SD flash memory chip that came with my new smartphone has some interesting issues with data integrity. I mostly use it to store sound files in the mp3 format, both pop songs of a few MB each and podcasts taking up tens of megabytes. And while listening to podcasts, in the middle of them,…

Good news from Egypt: the country's parliament has passed a new child protection law that, among other wise measures, criminalises female genital mutilation and raises the legal age of marriage to 18 for both men and women. Daily News of Egypt has a long article on the subject (from back when it…

Here's an ace animated film clip showing how the Phoenix Lander manoeuvered its camera/digger arm to take a picture of the surface under its own belly a few days ago. Gives you a good sense of how the thing looks way out there... More recent clips here.

I'm not a very frequent theatre-goer, and if I don't like a play, I leave in the intermission. But I have had the good fortune to see some excellent productions through the years, notably of Shakespeare. (It is of course entirely possible to play Shakespeare poorly too, and I've seen it done both…

After some culling and editing, I've put 74 snaps from my visit to Orkney on-line. Comments and questions are most welcome! [More blog entries about orkney, photography, Scotland; Orkney, Skottland, foto, fotografi.]

The forty-second Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Neuroanthropology. Archaeology and anthropology, and all related to the song "If You Should Try To Kiss Her" by Dressy Bessy. The next open hosting slot is on 16 July. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to…

After yesterday's paper session and civic reception in the church hall, I've had an amazing bus excursion today. The weather's been perfect, sunny and with little wind, and I've been shown great sites by some very knowledgeable people. And the landscape... Unbelievable. Brough/broch is a Norse loan…

I'm in the Bangladeshi restaurant Dil Se having a nice chicken achari. I tried to get Orkney mutton, but it was only available on advance order. Seems fitting to have a curry even in this storm-swept outpost of the British Empire. I started my dinner with a cold steak & gravy pie (from Hawthorn…

Began the day with a solid English breakfast, then a walk to the conference venue, heard ten paper presentations, did one myself, had dinner with colleagues, walked up the hill west of Kirkwall, logged a geocache, walked back to B&B. Phew! Of today's papers I found particularly interesting the…

I'm in Kirkwall on the Orkney islands for a conference on maritime societies in the Viking and Medieval periods. It's a lovely sunny evening, which is apparently a rare and precious occurrence around these parts. The dialect is also something to experience: the waitress at the fish & chips shop…

In 2005, a team led by myself and Howard Williams excavated a 9th century boat inhumation burial at Skamby in Kuddby parish, Ãstergötland, Sweden. The finest finds we made in the grave were a collection of 23 amber gaming pieces. These are extremely rare, the previous Swedish set having surfaced…

Me and Junior just got home from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. First we were shown the portrait collection and the main meeting room where a lot of Nobel prizes have been decided. Then, under the joint auspices of the Academy and the Swedish Skeptics Society, we heard an hour's lecture by…

[More blog entries about archaeology, Sweden, Gotland, religion, feminism, ; arkeologi, Gotland, religion, feminism.] Some time ago I received a gift from my aunt, bought at the County Museum of Gotland, a limestone island in the Baltic with an extremely rich archaeological record. The gift was a…

Many people are afraid of cell phones and base stations because they emit radiation. These people tend to know very little about physics, and are generally unaware that daylight through a window on an overcast day is also radiation. Much careful research has turned up no significant health risks…

Today I joined my friends Mattias Pettersson and Roger Wikell for a day of digging on an Early Mesolithic seal hunting station in the landlocked former archipelago of Tyresta. The Urskogsstigen 4 site is currently on a wooded hilltop at about 77 meters above sea level, and thus likely to date from…