archaeology
aardvarchaeology | April 28, 2007Just a note about yesterday's metal detecting at the Baggensstäket battlefield. We worked for less than four hours, but I got lucky and ran into the burnt remains of wooden fortifications on a seaward slope. Loads of nails and spikes in one place, and thanks to the fire, some were in pristine shape. Beautiful smithwork: octagonal cross-sections, square heads with bevelled edges -- all clearly taken from army stores (or the royal shipwharfs in town?) when news of the Russian approach arrived. Also charcoal and fire-cracked stone. I'd like to see an excavation there.
Bo Knarrström had modded…
aardvarchaeology | April 27, 2007[More blog entries about archaeology, Sweden, business, obituary; arkeologi, uppdragsarkeologi, dödsruna.]
Dr. Roger Blidmo died of a heart attack yesterday. I just talked to a long-time employee of his who confirmed the rumour. The guy was only 56. My heart goes out to his family.
Roger was one of Swedish archaeology's most famous/notorious participants, known since two decades for his uncompromising fight for private-sector contract archaeology. The whole business will take years to adjust to him not being there anymore. County archaeologists will suddenly have only half the tender-process…
aardvarchaeology | April 26, 2007[More blog entries about archaeology, Sweden, history; arkeologi, Nacka, historia.]
Long-time Dear Readers may remember the visit I paid last May to the wooded Skogsö hills where the Battle of Baggensstäket was fought in 1719. Bo Knarrström, Tomas Englund and the others on their project team are now back on the site with their metal detectors, finding more and more objects from the battle. This time, I'm joining the team for two days. Tuesday, they were visited by celebrated military historian Peter Englund.
A battle fought with firearms seeds an area thickly with evidence for what has taken…
aardvarchaeology | April 25, 2007[More blog entries about archaeology, Sweden, vikingperiod, vikings, Denmark, Germany; arkeologi, vikingar, vikingatiden, Tyskland, Danmark.]
I made one of my infrequent visits to the University of Stockholm campus today. After getting my PhD in 2003 I was really tired of the place, and I've pretty much stayed away since apart from a few vivas (Sw. disputationer). But today there was an international seminar on Viking Period towns, so I went. Weird to think it's been almost 17 years since I enrolled.
Turned out a team from Schleswig, people working with Haithabu, are here to meet people…
aardvarchaeology | April 24, 2007
[More blog entries about archaeology, Sweden, vikingperiod, vikings, gaming, amber; arkeologi, vikingar, vikingatiden, Småland, spel, bärnsten]
As told here before, in 2005 I was lucky enough to take part in unearthing the first set of amber gaming pieces to surface in Sweden for over a century. They were in a boat inhumation burial at Skamby in Östergötland. I believed that only one such set had been found before in Sweden, by Hjalmar Stolpe in the late 19th century when he excavated the cemeteries of Birka. The Birka grave in question (Bj 524) is a weapon inhumation with a silver coin…
aardvarchaeology | April 23, 2007As reported here before, a month from now there's an interesting symposium in Estonia under the heading Rank, gender and society around the Baltic 400-1400 AD. I'm not going, but for those interested I append the list of participants and papers below the fold. I like to know a little about who's doing what in my field.
(Dear Baltic colleagues, sorry for messing your diacritic characters up.)
Dr Mindaugas Bertasius (Kaunas Univarsity of Technology, Department of Cultural Science) - "Archaeological resource about rank system and early Lithuanian state"
PhD student Laurynas Kurila (Lithuanian…
aardvarchaeology | April 20, 2007Browsing through the reviews section of the current issue of Antiquity, I came across a confusing and irritating piece (behind a paywall) by one Dr. Charlotte Whiting. She works for the Council for British research in the Levant and is based in Amman in Jordan. Her review article treats three recent books on the Iron Age of the southern Levant, in other words, what is commonly known as Biblical archaeology. Though I entered archaeology as a shovel grunt on Tel Hazor in the Galilee, I know very little of this subject. I have read none of the books Whiting discusses; my complaint isn't about…
aardvarchaeology | April 19, 2007Last week an anthology I've edited was delivered from the printers.
Scholarly Journals Between the Past and the Future. The Fornvännen Centenary Round-Table Seminar. Stockholm, 21 April 2006. Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, Konferenser 65. Stockholm 2007. 109 pp. ISBN 978-91-7402-368-8.
On 21 April 2006 a round-table seminar took place on the premises of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities in Stockholm. The occasion was Fornvännen's centenary, and the theme was the current status and future prospects of such scholarly journals.
This volume…
aardvarchaeology | April 19, 2007Many senior Swedish archaeologists are afraid of metal detectors and uncomfortable with the idea that the public might have access to such machines. Likewise with information about the locations, or even the existence, of newly made metal detector finds. "Keep it quiet or you'll attract looters."
To some extent I agree: telling the press you have discovered a ploughed-out silver coin hoard before you're reasonably sure you have collected everything you can of it would just be stupid. But as often shown in my blogging, I don't agree when it comes to copper-alloy finds. In fact, I favour easing…
aardvarchaeology | April 18, 2007
As reported here before, the Medieval church of Älvestad in Östergötland, Sweden, burned down on 29 March. On 12 April I visited the site and took some pix. I was somewhat heartened to see that what has been destroyed was largely a product of radical 18th century re-building. The remaining 12th century masonry is confined to the tower which is the least damaged part of the church after the fire. The spire and the bells have collapsed into the tower, but it still looks structurally sound.
More pix below the fold.
[More blog entries about church, fire, Sweden, Medieval; kyrka, brand,…
aardvarchaeology | April 17, 2007
This entry was first published over the cell-phone network on my old site, without pix, on Friday 13 April.
I write this sitting on a rock outcrop just east of the great barrow of Disevid in Heda parish. It brandishes four great old oaks at me as it sits across a little marsh with a small stream running through. Sunshine, lark song, some wind and the low growl of a diesel motor in the distance.
Theres Grönqvist is on my detector today, and with few finds there is little for me to slap GPS coordinates on. The barrow is one of the largest in the province and undated, which is why we are here.…
aardvarchaeology | April 17, 2007
This entry was first published over the cell-phone network on my old site, without pix, on Thursday 12 April.
This morning we wrapped up our 20 person-hours in Varv, joined by regular Dear Reader Lars Lundqvist. The weather was great, but we found nothing older than the 11th century. A fragment of interlace-decorated jewellery with the openings between the tendrils marked crudely by round holes reminds me of Urnes brooches of c. AD 1100. A pear-shaped pendant with an obliguely hatched cuff feels vaguely like it might be a piece of High Medieval dress ornament. Together they may mark the spot…
aardvarchaeology | April 17, 2007
This entry was first published over the cell-phone network on my old site, without pix, on Wednesday 11 April.
This has been a stressful but fun day: I have spent most of it talking to the mainstream media. You see, I forgot to tell you yesterday that somehow regional radio had heard of the foil-figure model find I blogged about Monday, and a lady came out to site and interviewed me and Niklas. This morning it was a big radio news story. And so the other Östergötland media jumped onto the bandwagon: two TV stations and one newspaper hunted us down to look at the find, one newspaper…
aardvarchaeology | April 17, 2007
Very timely with the discovery of the Kaga foil-figure model, my buddy Ing-Marie Back Danielsson has published her PhD thesis in archaeology, Masking Moments. The transitions of bodies and beings in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (available on-line). There's a picture of a foil-figure or other late-1st Millennium human representation on almost every page. The viva is on Thursday Friday 20 April in Stockholm, and the opponent none other than that enfant terrible of the British Neolithic, Julian Thomas. Reading his fine 1991 book Rethinking the Neolithic, I remember wondering if there is anything…
aardvarchaeology | April 16, 2007
This entry was first published over the cell-phone network on my old site, without pix, on Tuesday 10 April.
Our Kaga site was very good to us today as well. 26 person-hours of metal detecting, six 1st Millennium brooches: four small equal-armed of the later 6th century, one disc-shaped with inlay socket of the 6/7th century, and part of a 5th century large equal-armed relief brooch. The latter has non-animal-art decoration in the Nydam style, a rare and exclusive piece of jewellery, fits nicely with the foil figure model. Also a High Medieval annular brooch. I'm crap at metal detecting:…
aardvarchaeology | April 13, 2007
This entry was first published over the cell-phone network on my old site, without pix, on Monday 9 April.
This morning I woke up in an unexpected and not very welcome winter wonderland. Driving the 2.5 hours to Linköping on summer tyres was scary. But the snow was gone by lunch. An icy wind persisted.
I'm writing this from the kitchen of a little house we're renting at the hostel in Mjölby. Today my crew of six did 27 person-hours of metal detecting at our site in Kaga parish, collecting about a hundred objects, most dating from the past three centuries. Only one can be dated before AD…
aardvarchaeology | April 9, 2007This week I'm doing fieldwork in Östergötland with friends, colleagues and Aard regulars from the Gothenburg Historical Society, the County Museum and the State Excavation Unit. We're continuing our metal detecting campaign from last spring, returning to the sites in Kaga and Hagebyhöga, and having a look at four new ones in Heda, Varv, Askeby and Östra Husby. Our objective is to find aristocratic farmstead sites of the period AD 400-1000. Swedish State Broadcasting's science show for kids, Hjärnkontoret, will pay us a visit.
One thing I miss since moving to ScienceBlogs is the ability to…
aardvarchaeology | April 3, 2007
Yesterday the spring issue of Fornvännen, Journal of Swedish Antiquarian Research, arrived from the printers. I'm proud to be one of its editors.
Very few Scandinavians realise how unfortunate the English title of the journal is. It came about due to a mistranslation of the Swedish adjective antikvarisk, meaning
Concerning the far past and ancient artefacts,
In accordance with professional standards in heritage management,
Of the used-book trade.
"Antiquarian", on the other hand, has the primary meaning "of antiquarians". This is really embarrassing, because the moniker "an antiquarian" is…
aardvarchaeology | April 2, 2007
Early Vendel Period baldric mounts from the Ottarshögen barrow, Vendel parish, Uppland.
Archaeological periods are defined by artefact types. For instance, the Early Neolithic of Sweden is defined by the appearance of Funnel Beaker pottery, thin-butted flint axes and pointed-butt axes (and a long list of other things). Before these types appear, the period has not begun. When they cease to be produced and are replaced by other types, we are no longer in the Early Neolithic. This means that archaeological chronology is largely structured around long lists of artefact types with as stringent…
aardvarchaeology | March 30, 2007
Stone architecture took off in Sweden from about AD 1100 onward, and we have quite a number of Romanesque-style churches preserved to various degrees. Many have been dated with dendrochronology.
I'm no friend of the Church, but I do like churches. And so I'm saddened to learn that Östergötland, the Swedish province subject to my on-going research, just lost one. Älvestad church caught fire Thursday afternoon and the fire left very little combustible material unburnt. Rural churches are a huge deal to their parishioners, and brave locals got hurt while trying to salvage stuff from the fire.…