archaeology
aardvarchaeology | May 30, 2007Two months ago my metal detecting team and I were visited in the field by the Swedish State Broadcasting company's TV science show for kids, Hjärnkontoret. They tell me they're running the story tonight, somewhere between 1830 and 1900 hours Swedish time. For those who choose to watch, it may be entertaining to know that minutes before the TV crew appeared on site, we found a 4th century ring made of a material we don't talk to the media about. So in the footage, everybody's quietly euphoric yet clamming up, while the TV people are being really thrilled to get to try out a metal detector and…
aardvarchaeology | May 29, 2007This year's issue of the Lund Archaeological Review reached me last week. It's the volume for 2005-2006, and most of the papers are dated 2005. Such a delay is no big deal in archaeology: our knowledge growth doesn't progress at the rate typical of the natural sciences.
What caught my attention in the new issue was three polemic pieces at the back of the volume. First there's another salvo in the war between my buddy Påvel Nicklasson and his erstwhile colleagues at the Jönköping County Museum. To the extent that I understand the conflict, what seems to have happened is that Dr. Nicklasson, a…
aardvarchaeology | May 27, 2007
The Swedish State Board of National Antiquities, Riksantikvarieämbetet, has been putting more and more useful things on-line in the past few years. The most recent addition is a blog in Swedish, K-bloggen, where a number of Aard readers and buddies of mine are writing some interesting stuff. Go, see, comment, learn the Swedish word for cultural resource management! Say after me please: "cull-TOUR-mil-yur-VOARD".
aardvarchaeology | May 25, 2007
If you have a lot of samples lying around that you want to run through AMS radiocarbon analysis, then get thee to the Poznan lab's informative web site. Tomasz Goslar tells me he's offering a summer bargain. The standard price is €320 / $430 / £220 plus sales tax per carbon sample, with an additional fee for collagen extraction if you submit bone samples. If you order 10 analyses before 31 July, you get them at a 15% discount.
I'm a satisfied customer of the Poznan lab. They did the dates for the Skamby Iron Age settlement and the Sjögestad Viking Period barrow. Send your samples to Poland…
aardvarchaeology | May 24, 2007[More blog entries about history, carnival, ancient, classics, medieval, middleages; historia, antiken, medeltiden, klassisk.]
Welcome, everyone, to Aardvarchaeology and the 27th Carnivalesque blog carnival! Aard is a blog about archaeology and skepticism and stuff, hosted here at ScienceBlogs among a bunch of natural-science blogs, most covering the life sciences. Carnivalesque deals in Ancient, Medieval and (in even-numbered instalments) Early Modern history, subjects in which I am interested but of which I am largely ignorant. Yes, I am a prehistorian. Let me classify your kitchen ware…
aardvarchaeology | May 24, 2007
Photograph from Per Dahlberg's blog.
Woah, I don't like the attrition rate among my colleagues right now. Magnus at Testimony of the Spade informs me that professor emerita Ebba During died on Tuesday 15 May after a battle with illness. Ebba was an osteologist, which means that like all Swedish bone people she combined the specialities of physical anthropology and animal osteology.
For years and years, Ebba taught osteology on the snug premises in Ulriksdal outside Stockholm made available by the archaeologist-king Gustavus VI Adolphus. Her manner was kindly and unassuming. Yet her published…
aardvarchaeology | May 23, 2007The fifteenth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Greg Laden's blog. Check it out! Archaeology and anthropology to move you and soothe you and treat you right, baby.
aardvarchaeology | May 23, 2007
One of the most recent additions to the on-line catalogue of the Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm is deliciously enigmatic. It's a little sandstone tablet (SHM 18011:100) measuring 73 by 60 mm, covered on both sides with vaguely script-like and architectonic graffitti. The edges are neatly notched, prompting a museum curator to suggest in the inventory notes that the tablet may have been intended as a yarn spool, nystvända. But no-one really knows.
The tablet was found by Sigurd Curman's team in 1919 during excavations among the ruins of the nunnery of Vreta in Östergötland. The…
aardvarchaeology | May 17, 2007I'm proof-reading pdf files of Fornvännen's summer issue, including a note I've written about the Kaga foil-figure die. It's full of ugly hyphenations, but contentwise it's OK. So I've put the file on-line here for all you guldgubbar fans.
Update 21 April '08: And here's the final printed version.
[More blog entries about archaeology, Sweden, darkages, vendelperiod; arkeologi, vendeltiden, Östergötland, Linköping.]
aardvarchaeology | May 15, 2007
Samian ware is beautiful reddish amber-coloured pottery, made in moulds and often decorated with figural reliefs. In recent times it has been given the Latin moniker terra sigillata. It was made in peripheral parts of the Roman Empire and rarely moved far beyond its borders. The Swedish finds can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Each find is alone in its respective province: Scania, Västergötland, Östergötland, Gotland...
Last Saturday, Pierre Petersson of the AHIMKAR blog led a guided tour of a 1st Millennium cemetery in Söderåkra parish, Småland, the province between Scania and…
aardvarchaeology | May 15, 2007Dear Reader, are you into archaeological surveying? Contour mapping, field walking, metal detecting, aerial photography, geophysics, truffle hogs? Then Kate Page-Smith has a conference session for you at the 13th EAA annual meeting in Zadar, Croatia, in September.Investigating Archaeological Survey
With a tradition stretching back over 300 years, archaeological survey and investigation deserves a definitive place within archaeological and historical research. Its multi-disciplinary approach not only provides greater understanding of sites and their landscapes, but it also offers a…
aardvarchaeology | May 14, 2007[More blog entries about archaeology, media, journalism, sciencejournalism; arkeologi, media, journalistik, vetenskapsjournalistik]
As mentioned before here on Aard, archaeology is not a single science but innumerable regional disciplines with little relevance to each other. For instance most archaeologists know absolutely nothing about ancient Egypt, simply because most archaeologists do not work in that country. This can make me sad sometimes, when other scientists go off on international post-docs or collaborate with colleagues in far-off countries. Chemistry is the same everywhere, but…
aardvarchaeology | May 8, 2007The fourteenth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Anthropology 2.0. Check it out! Archaeology and anthropology to take you through the night.
aardvarchaeology | May 7, 2007[More blog entries about archaeology, runes, Minnesota, kensington, middleages; arkeologi, runor, medeltiden, usa.]
The Kensington runestone is a 19th century fake from Minnesota. It purports to be a monument left behind by a Scandinavian expedition in the 14th century, but uses anachronistic turns of phrase and runic characters typical of 19th century popular culture. The runestone is nevertheless touted as authentic by enthusiastic local amateur scholars."8 Geats and 22 Norwegians on acquisition venture from Vinland far to the west We had traps by 2 shelters one day's travel to the north…
aardvarchaeology | May 4, 2007[More blog entries about archaeology, religion, vikings, vikingperiod, Scandinavia; arkeologi, religion, vikingar, vikingatiden.]
Thursday morning I stopped by the Royal Library in Stockholm and read a paper by Johan Callmer in the great big symposium volume concluding the Vägar till Midgård project ("Roads to Middle-earth"). I was mainly there to check what he had said about the above 8th century brooch from Åland, apparently depicting a headless quadruped. But I also found a couple of really good paragraphs on another issue toward the end. Unfortunately the camera in my handheld computer…
aardvarchaeology | May 3, 2007As I've mentioned before, quartz is a tricky material to make tools of. Quartz-tool production waste is very common on prehistoric sites in most of Sweden where flint is rare.
I just thought I should share one of the least attractive entries in the inventory of the Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm. This material was collected in 1971. I love it in all its absurdity.31110. Botkyrka parish, Fittja farmstead 1:1, 2:1, 3:1, registered site 280
Workshop find? Quartz quarry? C. 70 kg collected quartz, of which some may be worked.
Seventy kilograms!
aardvarchaeology | May 3, 2007
Using my friend Stefan's home-made illuminated drawing pulpit (tried & true), I've traced a photograph of the new-found Kaga foil-figure die to make it easier to understand the motif. The drawing will appear in a short paper in the summer issue of Fornvännen.
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…
aardvarchaeology | April 30, 2007Since the 1980s there has been a post-modernist movement in Western European archaeology where a strong influence from lit-crit, sociology and Continental philosophy has been felt. This has led, among other things, to radical relativism in some scholars, and to a tendency for archaeology departments to harbour and publish work that a) does not treat the archaeological record, b) does not aim at finding out what it was like living in the past.
I have criticised these tendencies at several occasions, as in this piece: "Archaeology is good fun but unimportant to most people". Not long ago, the…