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
December 17, 2014
There will be a spring after winter! They're planting bulbs down at the Saltsjöbaden Centrum mall.
Anglophones, why do you say "might" instead of "may" when expressing uncertainty? If you're certain, you say "I'll eat some bread". If uncertain, you sometimes just say "I may eat some bread". But…
December 9, 2014
It's been a busy couple of days with a lot of publicity. Monday morning a paper I've co-authored with my friend, geophysics specialist Andreas Viberg, was published in the on-line version of Archaeological Prospection. For reasons of scientific priority (which I myself like to establish by spilling…
December 4, 2014
This chocolate praline contains something that looks and smells like shampoo. Apparently it's flavoured with elderflower extract.
Jrette prints out song lyrics and fixes them to the outside of the shower cubicle as aids to singing in the shower.
I'm kind of OK with most subcultural dress codes. But…
December 3, 2014
Here's an interesting case regarding Muslim women's veils. They're instruments or symbols of patriarchal repression, right? Well, check this out.
Dania Mahmudi is from my area, Fisksätra. She's 14 years old and wears a veil. Mahmudi has been practising karate for years. Two weeks ago she went with…
December 2, 2014
Pompeii situations, where daily life at a settlement has suddenly and catastrophically been terminated and the site has then been abandoned, are extremely rare and extremely informative. As has recently been discovered, the Sandby fortified settlement on the island of Öland offers a Pompeii…
November 19, 2014
I spent last weekend at the annual boardgaming retreat organised by my friend Oscar. This was my fifth retreat, and I enjoyed it greatly. Oscar negotiates a good off-season all-inclusive deal for 25 of us at a small rural hotel, and then we spend two days gaming and sharing meals. People bring huge…
November 18, 2014
No, Kim Stanley Robinson, when two groups of characters meet and tell each other what they've gone through recently under the reader's watchful eye, you shouldn't write that dialogue. Because the reader already knows.
Back when my father-in-law the engineer had just come to Sweden from China and…
November 17, 2014
Before this month I'd never attended a film festival in any concerted way. But I was inspired by Ken & Robin's podcast to do so, and got myself a membership card for the Stockholm Film Festival, 5–16 November. The festival's excellent web site made it easy for me to choose which viewings to…
November 7, 2014
I follow the decommissioning of Sweden's churches keenly for several reasons. I like churches, the older the better, but I don't like the Church much. And I take great interest in the West's ongoing secularisation process. Before, I've blogged about how Maglarp Church was torn down, about how Örja…
October 31, 2014
What are the best arguments to keep your home wifi password protected? I think it's a pain in the ass. My retired neighbour makes prophecies of doom involving child pornographers standing around with laptops outside my fence, distributing contraband files and leaving me to do the jail time.
I tell…
October 24, 2014
Landsjö castle. State of knowledge after the 2014 excavations.
I'm giving a talk on Landsjö castle to the Kimstad Historical Society next week, and while preparing my presentation I made a sketch plan of this summer's discoveries regarding the plan. The ruin just barely breaks the turf, so we…
October 20, 2014
Anders Winroth (born in 1965) is a Swedish historian who received his PhD from Columbia in 1996 and now holds an endowed professorship in history at Yale. He has written several books on the Viking Period for lay readers, the latest one of which I've been given to review.
The main contents of The…
October 19, 2014
My whole housing development recently changed Internet Service Providers. We now have optical fibre from Ownit, offering hundreds of megabits per second. It works just fine. But there's a security issue and Ownit aren't taking it seriously.
All over Sweden, Ownit are deploying wifi routers that…
October 17, 2014
The Relentless Babblings of the Darkmire Soothsayer: "And then there shall come a day when things will be lost and people won't know where things really are and brothers will run away for absolutely no reason at all and fathers won't know where other fathers are or where they once were. And friends…
October 2, 2014
I did a fun exercise with my Umeå archaeology freshmen Monday: a role-playing debate about the ethics of burial archaeology. The framework was a hearing at the Ministry of Culture regarding a planned revision of the Ancient Monuments Law.
I assigned randomised groups of up to 4 students roles as…
October 1, 2014
Did I just tell the students that "polysemic" refers to people who donate repeatedly to sperm banks? Surely not?
In mid-70s Dungeons & Dragons, players would often bring their characters from one dungeon master and gaming group to another, effectively skipping between worlds. Unheard of in…
September 26, 2014
Fornvännen 2013:4 is now on-line on Open Access.
Ulf Ragnesten on an ornate late-1st millenium BC bronze chain belt from a cremation grave in a Gothenburg suburb.
Lars Larsson and Bengt Söderberg on recent excavations at the huge 1st millennium AD royal manor complex of Uppåkra, with in situ arson…
September 22, 2014
The Sweden Democrats (SD) is a racist populist party that got 13% of the vote in the recent Swedish parliamentary election. They got into Parliament four years ago at the expense of the Labour Party. This time around they more than doubled their support at the expense of the Conservative Party, who…
September 15, 2014
Why you should never get a tattoo: it's a fashion item that can never be upgraded. Imagine being forced to wear 1979 glasses all of your life from age 18 on.
So boring to proofread hyphenation.
Artists referenced in the sleeve notes to Goat's first album: 1. Dan Andersson, 2. Boubacar Traoré.…
September 8, 2014
"He was a splendid specimen of manhood, standing a good two inches over six feet, broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, with the carriage of the trained fighting man. His features were regular and clear cut, his hair black and closely cropped, while his eyes were of a steel gray, reflecting a strong…
September 5, 2014
The English language has a rich tradition of songs celebrating the joys of orgasm. Here are just a few examples.
Sumer Is Icumen In (anon., 13th century)
Come Again (John Dowland, 1597)
Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus (Charles Wesley, 1745)
Come, Thou Fount Of Every Blessing (Robert Robinson, 1757)…
September 3, 2014
Here's a neat case of self-perpetuating archaeology. Medieval history spawned sword & sorcery literature. This literature spawned tabletop fantasy role-playing games and Medieval re-enactment groups. These games and groups spawned live action role playing. And now the larpers have created a…
September 2, 2014
I've read Marilyn Johnson's forthcoming book Lives in Ruins. Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble. It's a collection of lively and enthusiastic portraits of contemporary archaeologists in their professional environment. Some may find the tone a bit too enthusiastic, pantingly so in…
September 1, 2014
14 August marked 200 years of unbroken peace for Sweden. Eight generations. Most of us don't even remember the name of the latest ancestor of ours who survived a war.
Other people get moments of déjà vu. I get moments of dissociation, when Martin Rundkvist seems not to be me.
Neat serendipitous…
August 30, 2014
Mushroom picking again this morning, this time in the area between Lakelets Skinnmossen and Knipträsket. Found more velvet and birch boletes than we cared to pick.
King bolete, Stensopp/Karl Johan, Boletus edulis
Orange birch bolete, Tegelsopp, Leccinum versepelle
Velvet bolete, Sandsopp, Suillus…
August 28, 2014
The library of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters is (one of?) Scandinavia's biggest research library (ies) for archaeology, the history of art and allied disciplines. Since it's co-located with the archives of the National Heritage Board in the East Stable next to the Swedish History Museum, it'…
August 23, 2014
It's the time of the year when it used to become legal to catch and sell Swedish crayfish (since 1994 there is no limit), and so the grocery stores sell Turkish and Chinese crayfish for a few weeks. The traditional way to eat them is to boil them with dill, salt and a little sugar, and serve them…
August 22, 2014
Has it really been almost four years since I blogged about mushrooms? This afternoon me and my wife repeated our September 8, 2010 expedition to the hills between Lakes Lundsjön and Trehörningen and picked almost a kilo of mushrooms in a bit more than an hour. We got:
King bolete, Stensopp/Karl…
August 15, 2014
Another good Swedish word: försoffad, literally "becouched", of people who have grown lazy and passive.
Do the Syndics of Cambridge syn with their dics?
I've started writing an essay collection based on the routines I've developed for party conversations about archaeology with laypeople.
It…
August 5, 2014
I've been reading a 1974 edition of Sigfrid Steinberg's 1955 classic Five Hundred Years Of Printing. Overall I've found it interesting and instructive, with a fine touch of sarcastic humour. But I came across a few paragraphs on the value of universal literacy that are so alien to me that I almost…