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
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-…
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…
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…
Another one of my favourite podcasts hits 100 instalments: the R.U. Sirius show. It's cyber-counterculture talk radio with ample references to sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, but done in a geeky, distinctly literate manner. R.U. Sirius himself used to be the editor of seminal cyber-mag Mondo 2000 back…
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…
A Dear Reader who calls themself Ophistokont made me curious about what this intriguing word might mean. It's very rare, with only seven Google hits and no entry in Merriam-Webster. Ophi- should have to do with snakes. -stok- calls stoichiometry to mind, having to do with elements. -ont has to do…
I've run Firefox 2.0 under three different operating systems on several machines. And every time I start this otherwise excellent program after re-booting, it gives me the following error message
"Your last Firefox session closed unexpectedly. You can restore the tabs and windows from your previous…
This 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…
One of my favourite podcasts, Escape Pod, currently offers its one hundredth weekly show. Congratulations Steve & Co, that is so impressive! I've listened to almost every one of the shows, offering excellent short stories in the science fiction and fantasy genres. Number 100 is Isaac Asimov's…
I've made a long-overdue update to my psych-music web page. Have a look, lots of album recommendations! And I'm aware of new releases for myself to check out from the M Coast, Mars Volta, Minders and Of Montreal, so I guess I'll be adding more stuff shortly.
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 --…
My dear scibling and fellow big-nose European Bora, over at the one Sblog that comes before Aard in the alphabetical list, has "tagged me with a meme". That is, he has handed me a coat of chainmail. No, he's sent me a chain letter, with a blogging assignment. I usually don't bother about these…
Seed has just revamped and re-launched the "Ask a ScienceBlogger" feature on the Sb front page . This time only one blogger answers each question. With a heavy dominance around here for bloggers in the life sciences, we're unlikely to see many questions that I'm equipped to answer with more than a…
I'll tell thee everything I can;
There's little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.
"Who are you, aged man?" I said,
"And how is it you live?"
And his answer trickled through my head
Like water through a sieve.
I'm a birthday boy! Half-way to 70. Why not read one of my favourite…
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…
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…
I'm in the kitchen. My wife just sent me the most amazing link from the living room.
TV Links
Last weekend I missed the only TV show I watch, Six Feet Under, now being aired in its fifth season in Sweden. Since then, I've tried to find the missed episode on DC++ and BitTorrent, to no avail. At TV…
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…
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,…
In recent years, I've bought three copies of a useful piece of software as part of package deals on computers. The software licences include free on-line upgrades, and hardly a week goes by without an offer of some tweak or patch to improve the workings of things. I gratefully partake.
I've been a…
Dear skeptical Reader, welcome to Aardvarchaeology and the 57nd Skeptics' Circle blog carnival! I used to blog at Salto sobrius, and now Aard offers the same salad of archaeology, skepticism, books, music and general psychedelic whimsy. We've got some really good stuff on the carnival this time.…
Dan, Kai, Thinker, Martin R, Paddy K, Tor, Martin C, Harald, Johnny.
Last night's blogmeet at Wirström's pub in Stockholm was a great success. Counting myself and Paddy K, we were nine guys eating and talking and drinking for hours. After a while we recruited three lovely daycare ladies who took…
Archaeologists love preciousss metals. Not for their monetary value, but because they keep so well. Take a fine damascened sword whose blade ripples like water, so well balanced that you hardly feel its weight, and bury it: it will look like crap after a few centuries. Bury a golden object, and it…
When I was twelve I bought my first LP, a synth-pop creation by a British band popular with middle-class teens at the time. Here are snippets of Martin Gore's lyrics to two of the songs.
You're feeling the boredom too
I'd gladly go with you
I'd put your leather boots on
I'd put your pretty dress…
On Thursday 29 March I'll be hosting the Skeptics' Circle blog carnival. I'd like to see Aard readers represented: if you've written anything in a skeptical vein recently, feel free to send me a link!
Back in September, I wrote a piece about that common type of archaeological site, the abandoned treehouse.
At these sites you'll see rotting boards and beams hanging from clumsily bent nails on a group of trees, gradually collapsing to the ground. Perhaps some old shag pile carpet decomposing on…
With Aard, I'm now back at 19,000, the Technorati rank I had with my old blog shortly before I moved to ScienceBlogs. It took a bit more than three months. Now, if only Google would give me a fookin' PageRank...
A recent addition to the excellent Runeberg Project e-text repository is the 1931 re-issue of Sven Petter Bexell's 1819 work Hallands historia och beskrivning. It's a patriotic history and description of the province of Halland, a part of Sweden's southwest coast that belonged to Denmark for many…
Inger Österholm died the night between Wednesday and Thursday after a long battle with illness. For over two decades, she was a driving force behind the Ajvide excavations on Gotland, where countless archaeology students from Stockholm and Visby received their first taste of fieldwork. Inger…
I've written before about modern ruins. Here's a great Finnish site: Tuomas Romu's photographs. Beautiful work!
Thanks to Mustafa Mond for the link.