sweden
aardvarchaeology | May 2, 2007[More blog entries about jewellery, archaeology, Sweden, migrationperiod, darkages; smycken, folkvandringstiden, arkeologi, Linköping.]
A few weeks back, myself and the Gothenburg metal detectorist team found some fine things in Kaga parish, Östergötland, as recounted here. One is a piece of an early 6th century, Migration Period, bronze, equal-armed relief brooch in Salin's Style I. It was originally probably gilded and decorated with niello.
My dear colleague Bente Magnus is an authority on these rare brooches. She has lent me a photograph of a complete specimen that must be very similar to…
aardvarchaeology | May 1, 2007[More blog entries about archaeology, history, Scandinavia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway; arkeologi, historia, Skandinavien, Danmark, Norge, Sverige.]
Archaeology consists of a myriad of weakly interconnected regional and temporal sub-disciplines. My work in Östergötland is largely irrelevant to a scholar in Lapland and entirely so to one in Tokyo. Larger interregional syntheses are rare and tend to be read mainly by undergraduates who have yet to select a specialty.
Now, imagine someone outside of Scandinavia, who speaks none of our languages, but who wants to approach our prehistoric…
zooillogix | April 29, 2007Rejected by his parents at birth, Bilbo the bamboo lemur was raised by hand by zookeeper Veronica Lindberg. As a result, Bilbo thinks he is a human and refuses to leave Veronica's side. Clinging to her back, wrapped around her arm or perching on her head, the two are inseparable. Raising Bilbo is no easy task as he must be fed once an hour, every hour. His photogenic furriness has made him a media darling in Sweden, although the country's hopes of dethroning Germany's nauseatingly adorable polar bear cub, Knut, are misplaced.
Bilbo shows-off "Blue Steel". Bamboo Lemur, genus Hapalemur
We…
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 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 6, 2007
Geocaching in the little nature preserve at Lake Kyrksjön in the western burbs of Stockholm, I came across this passionate couple. Every spring there are wild toad orgies in the wetlands around here. The males sing madly for days, mounting and clinging to anything vaguely like a female -- including human hands. The females are much larger and may be seen crawling along doggedly with up to three sex-crazed males hanging onto them. A funny thing about the toads is that they live through this intense springtime awakening with the same grumpy deadpan facial expression as always.
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
Sometimes I run into these tricky issues that I find it hard to make up my mind about, like the moral aspects of prostitution. Another one is public healthcare aiding circumcision performed for cultural and religious reasons.
Medically speaking, circumcision either of males or females is of course just a holdover from a barbaric past. No enlightened modern Jew, Muslim or generic American -- groups that cultivate this cultural trait -- should even consider it for their children. A cultural identity strongly contingent on the mutilation of babies can't be worth hanging on to without…