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.
aardvarchaeology
Posts by this author
November 15, 2007
[More blog entries about skepticism, christianity, religion, atheism, jesus; religion, kristendom, jesus, ateism, skepticism, skepsis.]
Guest blogger Jim Benton, scourge of faiths big and small, pokes a few innovative holes in the logical fabric of Christianity.
Introduction -- Joseph, the 'Five…
November 14, 2007
My friendly colleague Claes Pettersson heads excavations in Jönköping, a town in Småland. His team is working with 17th-century urban layers in a part of town that was laid out and settled by royal decree starting in the 1620s. Here are his pics of a few cool finds.
A shard from a painted window…
November 13, 2007
A press release for you archaeoheads:
An award of $2000 is made to honor outstanding efforts to enhance public understanding of archaeology, in memory of Gene S. Stuart, a writer and managing editor of National Geographic Society books. The Award is given to the most interesting and responsible…
November 12, 2007
Need archaeological illustrations? Need someone to design your excavation report, PhD dissertation, tourist folder? Then check out my buddy Göran Werthwein's web site!
November 12, 2007
As discussed here repeatedly before, the eastern coast of Sweden is in continual flux because of post-glacial shoreline displacement. Since the inland ice melted away and relieved its pressure on the land over 10 000 years ago, the dent made by the ice has been rebounding: first very quickly, then…
November 11, 2007
Welcome everybody to the Carnival of the Godless, a bi-weekly collection of good blogging from a perspective unclouded by notions of friendly guys in the sky who provide pie when you die.
Alexander the Atheist explains why both Christians and the god they worship
>need Satan.
Franklin's…
November 10, 2007
Evidence-based medicine, alternative medicine and weaponry change through time because of selection pressure. This means that they evolve and produce a fossil record of discontinued methods and therapies.
Any method or therapy introduced into alternative medicine will face selection pressure from…
November 9, 2007
[More blog entries about swords, fencing, replica, weapons, reenactment, medieval; svärd, fäktning, vapen, medeltiden.]
Uppsala-based virtuoso weapon smith Peter Johnsson of Albion Swords Ltd has offered to make a replica of the Djurhamn sword. He also kindly allowed me to put some pix of his work…
November 8, 2007
The twenty-seventh Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Sorting Out Science. Archaeology and anthropology, enough to turn you into a creature of the night, mad for love, with the fulfillment of your darkest desires your only goal in life.
The next open hosting slot is on 5 December. All…
November 8, 2007
Here's a novel way of identifying the erstwhile contents of an ancient pottery vessel: never mind the chemical composition of the residue, the lipids, the proteins, the isotope ratios, the pollen, the phytholiths, the seeds or the leaf fragments. Just scrape some gunk off the inside of the sherds…
November 6, 2007
History is the study of past societies through surviving text and images. I just got back home to Sweden, whose narrative history starts in the 9nd century AD and is even then really patchy for centuries. I have spent the past two weeks in China, where recorded history starts some time in the mid-…
November 5, 2007
Jean François Revel once wrote, "Let there be no discussion about methods except by those who make discoveries".
As may have become apparent at one time or another on this blog, I don't share a number of the ideals prevalent in current academic archaeology in Sweden. Post-modernism has become…
October 30, 2007
Came to Luoyang in Henan province on the Yellow River by train yesterday morning, passing factories and quarries, fertile fields and homes cut into hillsides like hobbit homes. We were booked into the Yaxiang Jinling hotel, a high-rise in Luoyang's vast new area of airily spaced skyscrapers…
October 26, 2007
The twenty-sixth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at The Primate Diaries. Archaeology and anthropology to rusticate your masonry and bevel your edges until your mind dissolves in bliss.
The next open hosting slot is on 5 December. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome…
October 25, 2007
Third day in Beijing, and I think my internal clock may finally have synched with local time. The past two nights have seen me spinning sleeplessly in bed in the small hours and finally reading Proust in the lobby. I padded around the hotel before four o'clock, listening to the snores of the night…
October 24, 2007
Junior and I have gone to China to join wife & sis in Beijing. We're attending the wedding of two old workmates of my wife, a Swedish lady and a Chinese gentleman who met while working as guides in Stockholm city hall. After the festivities we're taking the train to the groom's home town of…
October 23, 2007
I've never understood the point of bars or night life. Most people seem to go to bars and night clubs to meet their friends, get drunk and possibly get laid. I don't drink, from a very early age I've been in steady relationships with vigorous women, I see my friends on-line or at our respective…
October 22, 2007
The Skepticality podcast and Skeptic Mag's web site (9-page PDF file) have picked up on something I wrote on 5 July 2006. Thus, to keep you in the know, Dear Reader, I've copied the entry to Aard as well.
Skepticism, for those of you who don't use the word fifteen times a day, means an…
October 21, 2007
Wednesday 24 October will see the Four Stone Hearth blog carnival appear in all its archaeo/anthro glory at The Primate Diaries. If you have read or blogged anything good on those themes lately, then make sure to submit it to Eric ASAP. (You are encouraged to submit stuff you've found on other…
October 20, 2007
Yesterday I received a large package by mail from Dear Reader Twoflower in New York. He'd asked me for my address, and I was expecting a book or an off-print, but the minute I saw the box I realised I had been wrong. Guess what he sent me.
Apparently, I have pained Twoflower by publishing ugly pics…
October 19, 2007
Mats P. Malmer in 1989, holding a miniature replica of a Bronze Age sword. Photograph by Dr Rune Edberg, published with kind permission.
Yesterday, 18 October, was Swedish archaeology professor Mats P. Malmer's 86th birthday. Sadly he passed away on 3 October. I wrote a brief appreciation when I…
October 18, 2007
I've just signed another one of Sage Publications' ridiculous publishing agreements, prompting Aard's first re-run of an entry from my old blog. Here's something from 29 September 2006.
I agreed to a really crappy business deal today.
For a long time, academic journals from commercial publishers…
October 17, 2007
Per Widerström called me today and told me he'd just found a picture stone. This is breaking news, mainstream media not yet alerted. Photographs courtesy of the finder, and I hope to get some shots in horizontal lighting too where the relief scenes will be visible.
Scandinavian 1st Millennium art…
October 16, 2007
Freedom of religion wasn't formally codified in Sweden until 1952, but for decades Swedish law has forbidden religious teachings in schools. Children are required to attend a government-approved school, and one of the criteria for approval is no religion. This of course refers to the teaching of…
October 15, 2007
My part-time employer, the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, has been publishing books for over two centuries and rents a huge storage space for books in central Stockholm. Most of the stock isn't moving very fast. In fact, a lot of it hasn't moved at all since Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee.…
October 13, 2007
In the autumn issue of Antiquity is a fine debate piece (behind a pay wall) by William Meacham of Hong Kong about the Russian Baptist science fraudster Dimitri Kouznetsov. In 1989, 1996 and 2000, Kouznetsov managed to trick three peer-reviewed journals to publish papers full of faked data,…
October 12, 2007
A letter sent to me on 8 October. I translate:
I write to you because of the sword find I had the opportunity to watch on ABC-nytt together with my mother. [...]
Please take the following for what it is worth. As it touches upon the sword you found, I write to you and leave it to you to handle the…
October 11, 2007
A blogging and scientific experiment.
There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is ...".
Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:
You can leave…
October 11, 2007
Peps Persson is both one of Sweden's heaviest blues men and the single most authoritative reggae artist the country's produced. The sleeve of his 1975 hit album Hög standard parodies the sleeve from a likewise excellent ABBA album released earlier the same year. Yet the music is intricate studio-…
October 10, 2007
The twenty-fifth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Remote Central. Tim is celebrating the carnival's first birthday, yay! Archaeology and anthropology to make you and take you for the ride of your life.
The next open hosting slot is on 5 December. All bloggers with an interest in the…