sweden
aardvarchaeology | June 25, 2009
Swedish island-province Ãland's second-largest silver hoard ever was found recently. Dating from the 11th century and consisting mainly of about 1000 German and English coins, it also has some Islamic ones, one from Sigtuna and even one from India, a very rare occurrence. Some hack silver as well, and a piece of gold rod unless I'm mistaken.
The droning noise at the start and end of the above newsreel is a Bronze Age trumpet that had been lying in a bog for almost 2000 years at the time when the hoard was buried and would spend almost another 1000 years there before it was unearthed. Nice…
aardvarchaeology | June 19, 2009
The Swedish Humanist Association is currently running our version of the Atheist Bus Campaign in the Stockholm subway. Gud finns nog inte -- "God probably doesn't exist". It may seem a little gratuitous in a country where few people are religious any more, but the ads make the point that there's a lot of quiet Christian influence still around in society. For instance, the country's flag carries a cross. Anyway, the campaign isn't making much of a splash as far as I'm aware, though Göran Rosenberg (a liberal columnist who contributed to a pro-Anthroposophy anthology five years ago) wrote…
aardvarchaeology | June 18, 2009
Here's a cool thing from my buddy Claes Pettersson at Jönköping County Museum. He's been directing big excavations of the town's 17th century industrial precinct, and his team has found something that appears to be a forged gold coin. It consists of a soft grey metal (tin?) with a thin coating of a yellow metal. So far nobody's been able to tell quite what type of coin it was supposed to look like, only that one side features a crowned head. Any ideas?
aardvarchaeology | June 12, 2009
A month ago news of a wreck found in Sweden's largest lake, Vänern, made the rounds of international media. The story gained traction by an early mention of Viking ships and weapons found alongside the wreck.
Finder Roland Peterson from the Väner Museum now explains that though the ship-building technique used in the wreck was available already in the Viking Period, it then survived for centuries even into the 19th century. He thus deems it possible but not certain that the vessel is very old.
I've taken some small part in the discussion. Though I know little of ship types, I have some…
aardvarchaeology | June 3, 2009Sweden's secularisation process has been going on for about a century, usually pretty quietly, with the anti-Christian polemics of philosopher Ingemar Hedenius marking a brief period of open conflict in the 1950s.
As is the case in most European countries, Sweden's university system was born in the Middle Ages with the main aim to educate priests. Some of the older ones still have a Faculty of Theology. The other day another one of the National Agency for Higher Education's evaluations was published. They recently checked out the country's archaeology departments. Now they've done religion…
aardvarchaeology | May 29, 2009A friendly Englishman who recently settled in southern Sweden wrote me to ask how a law-abiding metal detectorist should go about getting a permit to pursue their hobby in this country.
The first thing to understand is that the Swedish system makes it effectively impossible to metal detect on a whim while vacationing (unless you're a nighthawk). Paperwork, overburdened county officials and long waits are always part of the process. A sustained metal detector hobby is only really possible if you stick to one or two län counties and establish a good relationship with the County Archaeologist…
aardvarchaeology | May 20, 2009On 16 April I wrote about an evaluation of archaeology programs offered at Swedish universities and colleges. Now Aard regular Ãsa reports at the Ting & Tankar blog on the results of in-depth evaluations of certain programs that were judged to be of iffy quality (source1, source2).
Three programs have been issued warnings by the National Agency for Higher Education:
The Mediterranean archaeology PhD program in Gothenburg
The osteology PhD program in Lund
The osteology MA program in VisbyAll the warnings are due to inadequate quantity and quality of teaching staff per student. Two PhD…
aardvarchaeology | May 8, 2009Anglophones find it really funny that one of Sweden's oldest towns is named Sick Tuna -- spelled Sigtuna. However, -tuna has nothing to do with fish, being instead a cognate of Eng. town and Ge. Zaun. It has something to do with enclosed areas. As a reply to a question from my friend Per Vikstrand, here's a snippet about these place names from the Migration Period chapter of my book manuscript about political geography in 1st Millennium Ãstergötland.Of the place-name categories in Ãstergötland suggested as indicating a status above the ordinary, only one is likely to have been productive as…
aardvarchaeology | May 6, 2009
I've filed the Sättuna excavation report with the State Board of National Antiquities, the County Archaeologist's office and the County Museum. And I've put it on-line at archive.org. Check it out if you're into the Late Mesolithic! We didn't get much data on the 6th century elite settlement.
aardvarchaeology | May 5, 2009
Spent the day metal detecting for Thomas Englund at the battlefield of Baggensstäket, anno 1719 (as blogged about before: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4). This was my third time there, and the first time I've helped on the northern half of the area across the water from where I live. Thomas found musket and pistol balls. I picked up an 18th century coat button and loads of steenkeenggg aluminium bottle tops, and saw an abandoned tree house. I'm particularly interested in the pre-battle finds that are starting to accumulate.
aardvarchaeology | May 4, 2009My buddy from the Swedish Skeptics, author Peter Olausson, reports on a recent visit to the Ekehagen prehistoric reenactment centre in Västergötland.Ekehagen Prehistoric Village
By Peter Olausson
In Ãsarp near Falköping, in a landscape littered with passage tombs, you'll find Ekehagen. Founded in 1983, the centre has a number of houses built to show what Prehistoric life was like in Scandinavia, from huts of the Mesolithic to a farm of the Middle Iron Age (no Vikings).
Note: This is not a museum. Walking around on one's own and studying the buildings etc. might work for people who already…
aardvarchaeology | April 28, 2009Printed newspaper are crap. The news in them is old, you still get entire multipage sections that you don't want, they use up trees and gasoline, they crowd your mailbox and you have to dispose of them after reading them. And they cost money! News should be read on-line, preferably with an RSS reader. (I use Google's).
Now, here's something for my Swedish readers. The country's main newspapers, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet, currently don't offer a finely sorted selection of thematic RSS feeds. If I want the main international news headings from them, then I have to put up with a load…
aardvarchaeology | April 28, 2009
Here's a fun project. Maja Bäckvall and Jannie Teinler with friends are visiting rune stones mainly in Uppland province, posing for photographs along with the stones and publishing them on a dedicated web site. So far they've done 121 rune stones!
aardvarchaeology | April 18, 2009
I really enjoyed my work yesterday. The forenoon saw me in the stores of the Museum of National Antiquities looking through Otto Frödin's uncatalogued finds from the "SverkersgÃ¥rden" site near Alvastra monastery. Not only did I find all the elusive 1st Millennium stuff that's mentioned in the literature but never illustrated, but I was also able to identify for the first time two small pieces of iron military equipment of the same date. These strengthen the case for counting SverkersgÃ¥rden among the province's rare Vendel Period elite settlements. After lunch at the Chinese place where I…
aardvarchaeology | April 16, 2009Yesterday the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education released an evaluation of the archaeology programs offered at eight of the country's universities and colleges.
The most dramatic finding was that three of the eight offer programs of dubious quality that will be subjected to in-depth evaluation:
All programs in Visby.
All programs in osteology and the PhD program in Mediterranean archaeology in Lund.
All programs in osteology and the PhD program in lab-based archaeology in Stockholm.This means that all Swedish programs in osteology are possibly sub-standard.
More generally, the…
aardvarchaeology | April 16, 2009
Högby near Mjölby in Ãstergötland is a magical place because of a serious lack of historical sensitivity. In 1876 (which is really late as these things go in Sweden) the locals demolished their little 12th century church and built a new bigger one a mile to the south. This meant that the parish centre of a millennium or so became a backwater and has not been built over later. It's completely rural, abutting a farm's back yard, very quiet. All that remains of the church is the churchyard wall and one of Ãstergötland's finest rune stones that was taken out of the sacristy wall. Some fine…
aardvarchaeology | April 8, 2009Björn in Helsingborg wrote me with a few questions regarding archaeology as a career.
Where did you study, for how long, what exactly?
University of Stockholm. Three years crammed into two years at 150% speed, that is, a BA / fil.kand. Four terms of Scandinavian archaeology, one term of history, one term of social anthropology. Later I did a PhD as well, but that's not needed to work as an archaeologist.
What's the labour market like? Is it true that there are no jobs?
The labour market is crap and there are no jobs. All Scandinavian countries produce new archaeologists at a vastly higher…
sciencepunk | April 5, 2009Swedish researchers have enlisted the help of artist Mikael Genberg to design a robot that will one day erect a tiny house on the moon. After landing on the lunar surface in 2012, the autonomous robot will scout for a suitable location and build a small red cottage, in keeping with the Scandinavian style.
The flatly-named The House on the Moon project aims to be a symbol of what one man can achieve. Students at the Mälardalen University will design, build and program the robot, although Professor Lars Asplund hinted that the final step may be a leap too far:
"We want to teach students who…
aardvarchaeology | April 3, 2009I'm almost done with the report from my excavations at Sättuna in Kaga last September. Here's an excerpt.
Finds and radiocarbon dates allow us to identify five phases on-site, two of them corresponding to the dates of the metal detector finds that occasioned the excavations.
Late Mesolithic: finds and features with one radiocarbon date.
Middle/Late Neolithic: one hearth with a radiocarbon date, no finds.
Mid-1st Millennium AD: a pit and a hearth with two radiocarbon dates, no finds.
Viking Period: one posthole with a radiocarbon date, no finds.
Modern rubbish pits.Late Mesolithic
This phase…
aardvarchaeology | April 2, 2009Not far from my home, in the woods down by the tracks, are the foundations of an abandoned railroad man's homestead. Its name, Vinterbrinken ("Winter Slope"), survives in a nearby street name, though few know that anymore.
The house was built by the railroad company in the 1890s and was torn down, along with its barn, in the 1950s. The municipal archives have photographs of the buildings and the people who lived there, and they are all known by name.
Lately, the staff at a nearby daycare centre has been taking the kids down to the site and had them excavate parts of it, collecting hundreds of…