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
The other night my wife suddenly hummed a familiar melody line. After some mental searching I identified it as a slightly modified version of French Canadian synth-poppers Trans-X's 1983 hit "Living on Video" that I haven't heard in 20 years or more. But my wife said, "No, it's this Robyn song I…
Spent 5.5 hours on site in Wales today and 7 hours by car, train and plane to get from there to Skavsta airport. I've got another couple of hours by bus and train before I'm home. The trains I rode in the UK were on time but often did not leave from the platforms indicated by the online trip…
The Department of History and Archaeology in Chester is moving from their lovely but run-down Georgian building at the north city gate to the main campus. So I spent most of today helping with the move: shifting finds from a Tudor manor site at Stokenham in Devon and excavation gear. On our way to…
Professor Nancy Edwards and associates take stock of the western trench at the end of the day's work.
Today offered much better weather, but due to permit trouble very little metal detecting. Instead I've been "cleaning" with the students, which basically means slow removal of soil using a trowel…
The ninety-seventh Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Zenobia. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
The next vacant hosting slot is on 15 September. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. It's a good way to gain…
I'm in north-east Wales for a few days' work on a Universities of Chester and Bangor dig. We've had a rainy day, which meant that we couldn't work effectively for very long. But I did some metal detecting, finding lead spatters that may have to do with 18th century repairs to the 9th century…
Over the past 4½ years I've made a habit of calling out on my blog whenever I've planned trips abroad, in the hope of meeting up with readers. As far as I can remember, the only times when this has actually led to any meetings were two years ago when I went to a) a science blogging conference, b)…
The 97th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at Zenobia: Empress of the East on Wednesday. Submit great recent stuff to Judith, your own or somebody else's. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!
The next open hosting slot is already on 18 August. If you're a blogger with an interest in the anthro/…
I've been fishing, swimming and walking the shoreline around my mom's summer house for almost 30 years, and so I have a pretty good idea of what kinds of fish there are out there. Most of them I have only seen during fishing with nets, so it's clear that the visible sample of fish species depends…
Motala in Ãstergötland has been recognised in recent years as one of the richest Mesolithic sites in Scandinavia north of the current and former Danish provinces. Excavations in waterlogged sediment along River Motala ström have produced great numbers of bone and wood objects that have rarely…
Archaeology Magazine's July/August issue (#63:4) has a lot of Old World articles which made it particularly interesting to me. We get Nabataean mausolea in Arabia, Europid Bronze Age mummies in Xinjiang, the Neanderthal genome, Greek temples in southern Italy, and a great feature on new…
Last summer I battled with wasps: this years it's ants. Small black ones have underground nests in our yard, and they usually don't bother us much. But a hot and dry summer recently inspired them to investigate our house, where they found two things they really like: sugar and water. When we…
The most dedicated man in Swedish fringe archaeology is at it again. I've reported on and off about Bob G. Lind's antics in Scania (1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5), but it's been a while now. I didn't write about the time when he interpreted a dotted line on an old map as an alignment of standing stones that…
Next week, 20-23 July, I will work on a Universities of Bangor & Chester excavation in north-east Wales headed by Nancy Edwards and my friend Howard Williams. The fieldwork concerns the site of a 9th century memorial cross, the "Pillar of Eliseg", mentioned here in February of last year.…
I had two pages in the May issue of Forskning & Framsteg (Sweden's equivalent av Scientific American) about recent books on the Scandinavian Bronze Age. I was happy to publish there, but not very happy with the rushed chop job the contribution went through without my involvement before it was…
In the past few days I have received four e-mails from Adam Bly, founder and proprietor of Seed Media Group and Scienceblogs. OK, they were group mail sent to all the SciBlings, but four e-mails from him is more than I have received before in 3½ years at Sb. And now Adam has become a SciBling…
Like everything else we make and use, gaming pieces form part of the archaeological record. I once had the pleasure of lifting a particularly fine set of 9th century hnefatafl pieces out of the ground. Now I have seen a set of 20th century mah jong pieces go into the ground.
The site of the burnt…
I reacted to the news about the Pepsiblog debacle with a cynical smirk and a sinking feeling in my stomach. Though I am interested in health-related and environmental issues, they are not at the forefront of my blogging or my professional life. Of course it hurts the Sb brand and Sb's journalistic…
The ninety-sixth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Testimony of the Spade. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
The next vacant hosting slot is already on 4 August 21 July. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting…
A metal detector is very nice, particularly when there isn't a lot of aluminium in the ground. Archaeology cannot do without it. But what I really want now is a holographic radar instrument. Still in the prototype stage, this technology is being developed by Tim Bechtel of Franklin & Marshall…
My house. It's L-shaped; of its six walls, only these two lack windows.
In January, a house near ours caught fire in the middle of the night and was pretty much burned out. A malfunctioning electrical blanket on a couch in the living room was the cause. Nobody got hurt. But it was scary, because…
The 96th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at Testimony of the Spade on Wednesday. Submit great recent stuff to Magnus, your own or somebody else's. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!
The next open hosting slot is already on 21 July. If you're a blogger with an interest in the anthro/archaeo…
The recently found Norwegian 5th century runestone of Hogganvik carries a memorial inscription and so might be expected to have stood on or near a grave. My buddy Frans-Arne Stylegar has excavated the site and sadly found no preserved burial, but he did find the original stone setting of the…
My buddy Micke and his Japanese college room mate:
"I'm Ken Nakamura. Ken means 'heresy'!"
"Really? That's kind of... odd."
"Yes! It means 'HERESY'! Rike when you are never sick!"
"Ahaaa, you mean 'healthy'..."
"Yes! Correct! What does your name mean?"
Image by Joseph Hewitt of Ataraxia Theatre.
Archaeology is a famously ghoulish pursuit whose practitioners are always on the look-out for dead bodies to gloat over. If we can't find a grave, then at least we'll try to get hold of animal bones from kitchen middens and sacrificial deposits. I've…
Reiner Knizia is one of the board-gaming world's greatest celebrities, famous for a long string of hit games. According to the members of Boardgamegeek.com, the best of Knizia's games is Tigris & Euphrates (1997), which is #11 on the site's thousands-strong ranking list. I can't really…
Californian Roy Zimmerman is a satirical singer in the vein of Tom Lehrer (who endorses him). He recently released his seventh solo album, Real American, and I'm happy to say that Zimmerman has lost none of the brilliance us fans have come to expect.
The disc has 13 tracks of which 3 are spoken…
Jan Zalasiewicz is a geologist active at the University of Leicester. His 2008 book The Earth After Us: What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks? is an interesting read even though the title does not correspond very well to the contents. Zalasiewicz does answer the question about what legacy…
The ninety-fifth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Afarensis. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
The next vacant hosting slot is already on 21 July. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. It's a good way to…