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
June 14, 2007
Here's a charming interview with Apples in Stereo front man Robert Schneider, followed by him performing "Energy" from the new album. All courtesy of the Instant Talk Show. (Total clip length 9 minutes.)
June 13, 2007
As an undergrad and PhD student in the 90s I heard a lot of rumours about the 1988-93 excavation of Gullhögen, a barrow in Husby-Långhundra parish between Stockholm and Uppsala. These rumours held that the barrow was pretty weird: built out of charcoal (!), unusually rich, and sitting on top of…
June 12, 2007
I am almost completely unable to enjoy Chinese pop music. In fact, I can barely stand listening to it: I find it saccharine-yet-bland and silly and clichéd. But there's one aspect of it that's kind of fun, though I can only appreciate it with the help of an interpreter. Chinese musicians record…
June 11, 2007
Antiquity is the world's most respected and widely read academic journal in archaeology, our equivalent of Nature or Science. Its summer issue reached me last Friday and yesterday I brought it to the beach. On the first page of his editorial (entertaining, anti-po-mo, available on-line behind a…
June 9, 2007
From age twelve to twenty-five, I was a gaming geek. It started with the Swedish version of Runequest (Drakar och Demoner) and the Lone Wolf solo adventure series, and soon branched out into computer games and sundry board games. Gaming was a big part of my life and I had a lot of fun with it.
In…
June 8, 2007
An old sorcerer has passed away. Karl Hauck was the single most influential contributor to the iconology, the interpretation of mythological imagery, of 1st Millennium AD Northern Europe. Hauck's interpretations built upon solid knowledge of later written sources, most importantly the Icelandic…
June 7, 2007
A week ago, Australian historian Keith Windschuttle gave a talk in Sydney under the heading "Postmodernism and the Fabrication of Aboriginal History". The full text is on-line, highly recommended.
"The argument that all history is politicised, that it is impossible for the historian to shed his…
June 7, 2007
Dear Reader -- let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to the Strawberry Parking Lot.
For the past century and a half, the naming of Swedish places has largely been taken out of the people's hands and regulated by the authorities. New names of big important places are no longer negotiated…
June 7, 2007
Two fine crittergraphs from Felicia Gilljam, a prominent Swedish Secular Humanist. Both snapped in recent years in Grödinge parish near Stockholm.
Top, a slow worm (Anguis fragilis, Sw. kopparödla). Below, a Southern Hawker dragonfly (Aeshna cyanea, Sw. blågrön mosaikslända).
June 6, 2007
Eight years ago to the day I was invited to a party one Sunday afternoon. I didn't know the hostess very well: we'd only met twice, at a Mercury Rev concert and a library, and we'd exchanged e-mail addresses. At the time, I was eight months into a surreal period of my life when I was happily…
June 6, 2007
The sixteenth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Testimony of the Spade. Check it out! Archaeology and anthropology beyond your wildest dreams.
"Give yourself over to absolute pleasure
Swim the warm waters of sins of the flesh
Erotic madness beyond any measure
And sensual daydreams to…
June 5, 2007
David Nessle is a Swedish comic artist, author, editor, translator, sf fan and blogger. His blog is without any serious competition the wittiest one I've encountered in the Swedish language, and I read it religiously. Recent themes of his blogging have been a Saami version of "Ghost Riders in the…
June 4, 2007
A recurring theme in my blogging is my frustration at completing a PhD at 31 and finding myself completely supernumerary. A few unwise policy decisions of the government's has allowed a generation of middle-class Swedes like myself to specialise in academic subjects for which there is no market…
June 4, 2007
Since the last time we checked in with Kurtz back in March, those blackhearted deviants have released nine new songs on their web site. That's more than an LP's worth of original material in less than three months. Their sound has developed through the adoption of Garageband software. Fans of the…
June 4, 2007
Swedish social sciences zine Axess just published a thematic issue about the twilight of post-modernism and the lingering pockets of anything-goes relativism that it's leaving behind. Essays by Johan Lundberg, Ophelia Benson & Jeremy Stangroom, Richard Wolin and Christofer Edling. Currently…
June 4, 2007
A team headed by Elizabeth A. Matisoo-Smith of the University of Auckland has analysed the DNA of archaeological chicken bones from Chile and found that the fowl belonged to a Polynesian breed. Now comes the cool bit: the bones date from the 14th century. We've known since the 60s that…
June 4, 2007
Wednesday 6 June will see the Four Stone Hearth blog carnival appear in all its archaeo/anthro glory at Testimony of the Spade. If you have read or blogged anything good on those themes lately, then make sure to submit it to Magnus ASAP. (You are encouraged to submit stuff you've found on other…
June 4, 2007
Sweden has been going through a process of secularisation and de-Christianisation for more than half a century. In the same period, rural population figures have dwindled as people move to towns and cities to study and find jobs. One result of all this is that rural churches, of which there are…
June 2, 2007
Got up at half past seven, spent the morning geocaching around Haninge. Found nine out of ten caches I searched for, listened to music and podcasts, sunshine, happy! Saw some sights:
A hill fort
A huge sun-dial sculpture
The ruin of a bunker (?)
A modern runestone (c. 1900), cemented to a cliff…
June 1, 2007
A few words about a new novel I read half of and didn't feel like finishing. (Better say something or the publishers might strike me from their mailing list.)
Rant is Chuck Palahniuk's eighth novel. It brings Nick Cave's Old-Testament grotesque And the Ass Saw the Angel (1989) to mind in its…
May 31, 2007
[More blog entries about archaeology, Sweden, ethnicity, saami, minorities, indigenouspeople; arkeologi, etnicitet, samer, minoriteter, urbefolkningar]
I got an inspiring question from Z at Enkla bloggen.
"Who made the rock carvings, hällristningar? Was it the Saami people?
Is this a sensitive…
May 30, 2007
Here's something cool. Google is attacking proposed Swedish wiretapping legislation.
"We have contacted Swedish authorities to give our view of the proposal and we have made it clear that we will never place any servers inside Sweden's borders if the proposal goes through."
Good thing someone…
May 30, 2007
Two months ago my metal detecting team and I were visited in the field by the Swedish State Broadcasting company's TV science show for kids, Hjärnkontoret. They tell me they're running the story tonight, somewhere between 1830 and 1900 hours Swedish time. For those who choose to watch, it may be…
May 30, 2007
[More blog entries about neuroscience, lamprey, computationalmodeling; neurovetenskap, nejonöga, datormodellering.]
In Stockholm on 14 June, my psychedelic friend and fellow honorary Chinese Mikael Huss will present his PhD thesis in engineering (available on-line). He has built software models of…
May 29, 2007
This year's issue of the Lund Archaeological Review reached me last week. It's the volume for 2005-2006, and most of the papers are dated 2005. Such a delay is no big deal in archaeology: our knowledge growth doesn't progress at the rate typical of the natural sciences.
What caught my attention in…
May 28, 2007
I have the soul of a stamp collector. Some might object that it's an unusually loud and psychedelic stamp collector, but I think it's so. It shows in my research (data-heavy, fussing over terminological definitions, with a lot of statistics), in my attacks on nebulous jargon and muddled…
May 28, 2007
I love the ability to see what people type into search engines before they end up here (an ability provided, for instance, by Extreme Tracking). Much of the time, people are obviously looking for porn. Somebody just typed the following into Google:
Where I can put my penis in the women pic?
Yes,…
May 27, 2007
The Swedish State Board of National Antiquities, Riksantikvarieämbetet, has been putting more and more useful things on-line in the past few years. The most recent addition is a blog in Swedish, K-bloggen, where a number of Aard readers and buddies of mine are writing some interesting stuff. Go,…
May 26, 2007
Marshmallow Coast's 2000 offering Coasting is one of my favourite albums: quirky and cool neopsych with a lot of acoustic guitar and off-key singing. 2002's Ride The Lightning also has some great songs (listen to "Classifieds"!), but their 2003 production Antistar is boring if not downright bad. It…