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
In 2005, when Howard Williams and I and a bunch of hard-working people excavated a Viking Period boat grave at Skamby in Östergötland, we found a funny little silver pin. It wasn't in the grave, it was found just outside the edge of the superstructure, near the ground surface, though technically in…
I read Donald Prothero's Evolution for the palaeontology and general evolutionary zoology, and I was not disappointed. The book is up-to-date, well-argued, well-illustrated and aimed at the educated lay reader. Stylistically, it's not bad, though poorly copy-edited, and I did find the author's use…
My on-line buddy Vladimir over at Diogenes's Bottle has blogged extensively and almost incomprehensibly about my humble personage. Just look at the possibly wonderful (or not) things he has to say about me!
La început - e drept - ideea ma amuza, caci citeam constant blogul lui Martin, un prieten…
It's February 2008. I've had access to the WWW for 13 years. Yet I can still not get a news feed filtered to any reasonable approximation of my tastes.
I want very little news: only the important stuff. I think almost all conventional news are a complete waste of time. I want no business, no sports…
When I was in Florida a month ago, right after having lunch with an elder statesman of the skeptical movement, I found the above polaroid photograph on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. The signs above the windows have allowed me to identify the building as a Williams Scotsman "section modular…
The thirty-fifth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Archaeoporn. Archaeology and anthropology is quite a lovely and ladylike pastime for us ladies!
The next open hosting slot is on 9 April. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me. No need to be an…
My involvement in the skeptical movement and science blogging has caused me to think about my professional relationship to the concept of science. Archaeology is a social science in the US and one of the humanities in Europe: in neither case is it seen as a natural science, the kind that gets to…
Dear potential academic employers,
I know you are all secretely competing for who will have the pleasure of giving me a forskarassistent assistant professor's position, to see me fire the imaginations of a new generation of students, to see me produce awesome research in great quantities and…
The Skalk article I mentioned the other day (with the rubber goat) tells the story of an unusual find made in northernmost Jutland in the summer of 2005. Peter Jensen was stripping some land of topsoil for gravel extraction when, from the vantage point of his machine, he spotted something…
I'm a big fan of Danish archaeology. In my opinion it is the best in Scandinavia, both regarding the sites they have and what they write about them. This love of Danish archaeology has been a strong incentive for me to learn to read Danish easily, though I still have a very hard time understanding…
Here's a really good primer on the institutional landscape of US archaeology by Michael Dietler. Some of the perspectives he offers are just mind-boggling.
"There are at least 450 colleges and universities in the United States that offer a B.A degree in anthropology ... . Of those institutions, 98…
I've just agreed to a flattering request from real.girl at Skepchick. This means that chances are you will find a skeptical archaeologist in partial deshabillé in the 2009 edition of the Skepchick skin calendar. And I'm train blogging again. And I'm on my way to Lund where historians of religion…
After work today I had dinner with my friends Asko & Eva and then went to the Cirkus concert venue to hear the Mars Volta. For those of you who have missed them, they're a US psychedelic progressive rock outfit whose fourth album just entered the US top-10 at #3.
The band was an octet tonight…
The other day I found and photographed another tree house ruin. I decided to re-post the following piece from September 2006 and make these things a steady presence on Aard, with a category tag of their own.
If you've ever taken a walk in the woods near a housing area, you've seen them: modern…
The anthology I edited last spring, Scholarly Journals Between the Past and the Future, has received one long thoughtful review by Alun at Archaeoastronomy and another one by the Grumpy Old Bookman.
Thad at Archaeoporn and Alun at Archaeoastronomy have alerted me to an upcoming new journal: the Past Discussed Quarterly.
"PDQ is a journal designed to provide a bridge between blogging and academia. It will provide stable citeable references for selected weblog posts focussed upon or of interest…
Here's a particularly fine song lyric from Californian 80s indie band Camper Van Beethoven, off of their 1989 disc Key Lime Pie. The song is a folky number in march time with violin, and David Lowery's singing is exquisitely pained and raw. Following this, they released no new material until 2004…
The thirty-fourth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Our Cultural World. Archaeology and anthropology be da shit, trudat!
The next open hosting slot is on 9 April. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me. No need to be an anthro pro.
Also, don't miss…
I'm on a train in Östergötland. A while back I caught a fond glimpse of the barrow at Stora Tollstad in Sjögestad that me & Howard Williams trial-trenched and dated to the 9th century in 2006.
I'm giving a talk this afternoon to my colleagues at the Jönköping County Museum's excavation unit…
Good news from Uppsala: after the end of the year, there will be only one PhD student in archaeology left in that august academic city. This is the result of a simple reform enacted ten years ago by Minister for Education Carl Tham: since that date, no student may enter a PhD program at a Swedish…
Co-discoverer of DNA and Nobel laureate James Watson is the Seed Media Group's board of directors' scientific advisor. Not a member of some advisory group: the board's single advisor. He has remained so despite a highly publicised racist utterance four months ago.
In October last year Watson was…
Post-modernist hyper-relativism unexpectedly rears its ugly dying head in the form of a call for papers from one Tera Pruitt for the otherwise respectable Archaeological Review from Cambridge. Note the scare quotes around the words truth and valid claims.
Call for Papers (April 2009 Issue)
Beyond…
Science Debate 2008 is an initiative to inject more science policy into the run-up to the US presidential elections. Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum over at The Intersection just announced that they have sent formal invitations for an April 18 public science policy debate in Philadelphia to…
I'm a big fan of Swedish-Finnish ethno band Hedningarna ("the Pagans"). Centred around three musicians working with a series of very fine singers, the band released five albums from 1989 to 1999. Their method was to go for the most primitive acoustic instruments known to Swedish ethnic music and…
Back in October when myself & the family were in Beijing, we spent a Friday at the city's main amusement park. The place was almost deserted, so the kids didn't have to stand in line at all. They would repeatedly ride these huge attractions all on their own.
Beijing amusement park has an old…
I hardly ever remember my dreams. When waking and then going back to sleep, like on a Saturday morning, I can however sometimes bring back fragments into the real world.
This morning I dreamed that we were moving to a new apartment in an unfamiliar area that was apparently not far from where we…
The past week I've twice heard Nirvana's 1993 song "Heart Shaped Box" on the radio. I realised that its lyrics have a number of remarkably powerful lines. Kurt Cobain was a talented man. Here are the song's two verses.
She eyes me like a Pisces when I am weak
I've been locked inside your heart-…
I got another job rejection letter today. Five out of 79 applicants (6%) got research positions in Linköping, 2.5 hours by car from my home. The five are two chemists, one neurobiologist, one environmental scientist and one gender studies scholar. At least I wasn't beaten by any colleague.
What…
As chronicled here in many entries over the past months, computer consultant, New Age author and homeopath Bob G. Lind has carved out his own niche in Swedish amateur archaeology with controversial interpretations of Scanian archaeological sites Ales stenar and Höga stenar. Another Bob Lind is a…