archaeology

At my wife's suggestion, I quit work 1½ hour early today and cycled with her and the kids into the woods to pick mushrooms. Lovely sunny afternoon, and I can report that the hills between Lakes Lundsjön and Trehörningen are rich in boletes right now. Here are the species we got:King bolete, Stensopp/Karl Johan, Boletus edulis
Velvet bolete, Sandsopp, Suillus variegatus
Orange Birch Bolete, Tegelsopp, Leccinum versepelle
Copper brittlegill, Tegelkremla, Russula decolorans
Chanterelle, Kantarell, Cantharellus cibarius
Fårticka, Albatrellus ovinus
[More about mushrooms; svamp.] Read the comments on this post...

A truck laden with artefacts thought to be from China’s Ming dynasty was seized in Vietnam’s Quang Ngai Province.
Ming Dynasty artefacts, Vietnam Net Bridge 28 Aug 2010
Truck on antiques seized
Vietnam Net Bridge, 28 August 2010

Police of the central province of Quang Ngai on August 25 seized a 2.5 ton truck full of antiques, which may belong to China’s Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).
The truck was going from Binh Chau commune in Quang Ngai province in the central province of Binh Dinh when it was seized.
There were three people in the truck, including the driver, 27, a local man and two women, 50 and 53 years old, from Binh Dinh province. One of them is the truck owner.

Apparently, there was a rumour that the trees at Ta Prohm, aka the Tomb Raider Temple were going to be removed…

Tomb Raider temple trees are here to stay
The Phnom Penh Post, 27 August 2010

Ongoing rumours that the famous trees at the equally famous Ta Prohm temple will be lopped are unfounded.
The trees, which had a supporting role in the Angelina Jolie movie Tomb Raider, will remain a permanent fixture, according to Cambodian archaeologist Sim Than, because the trees too can be considered cultural.
“Culture is not just the temple, but also the trees because they are more than 100 years old,” he said. “They will remain even though they have taken root within the temple itself.”

To my horror, Ystads Allehanda reports that Wladyslaw Duczko has joined Nils-Axel Mörner on a project to excavate the famous Ales stenar stone ship.

Why does this pain me? Because while (as I have reported here before) geologist Mörner and his collaborator homeopath Bob G. Lind are Swedish archaeology's most notorious cranks, Duczko is not. He is a respected senior archaeologist and known as an authority on Slavic silver jewellery of the Viking Period.

If I had heard that Duczko was going to excavate Ales stenar, I would have said "Well done, Wladde, I'm looking forward to seeing your results. Hope Bob doesn't try to kill you." But now he's lending his academic credibility to a collaboration with the people who are just about the least qualified of all adult Swedes to take part in the excavations.

The County Archaeologist of Scania will in all likelihood not give an excavation permit to anyone who collaborates with Mörner or Lind. And I believe the land is owned by the National Heritage Board, which likewise will let them nowhere near the site with a shovel. But from now on, Wladyslaw Duczko's academic credibility will be used to support some really weird fringe archaeology. Why, oh, why, Wladde? Didn't you know?

[More about Technorati Tags: archaeology, skepticism; arkeologi, Skåne, ystad.] Read the comments on this post...

Kent Davis posts some distressing news of a prehistoric circular earthwork site in Memot District, Kampong Cham Province in Cambodia that was levelled last week – without permission – to make way for temporary housing and development. Cambodian prehistory is not well studied, and the loss of a prehistoric site such as this represents a great and permanent gap in our knowledge of Cambodia’s prehistoric past. Alison has a great post about circular earthwork sites in Cambodia that you can read here.

Bulldozers Destroy Priceless Archaeological Site in Cambodia
Devata.org, 05 September 2010

The rural Memot area in southeastern Cambodia has proven itself as one of the richest sources of information about the country’s pre-historic development. Ancestors of the primitive people who once lived there later became part of the Khmer Empire. The Khmer, one of the world’s most advanced artistic civilizations, grew to rule most of Southeast Asia only 1500 years after the Memot villages formed.
On Tuesday, September 2, a colleague in the Memot area placed an urgent call to archaeologist Heng Sophady to report the destruction of an ancient village site. Mr Heng rushed to the site, located in Samrong Village and called the Samrong Circular Earthwork.

Had breakfast guests: a beautifully pregnant old friend and our old boss/buddy came at ten and I cooked us all a full English. Everybody who's into the Gustavian / Georgian era and reads Scandy, read Kristina Ekero Eriksson's new popular biography of Märta Helena Reenstierna, the Lady of Årsta! I read it in manuscript, and I loved it.
Played Lost Cities against my wife who is getting worrisomely good at it, and Puerto Rico and Space Alert against gamer buddies. The latter game is highly unusual. It's a cooperation game played against the clock, with a twist I've never seen before: it includes an audio CD that gives you messages and keeps time in the game while everybody orders their guys around. Then, when the audio track ends, you run the "program" you've all co-created, and see if you've all beat the game or not. Think Pandemic crossed with Roborally and played against the clock. We were crap, but we had fun!
Cocktail party, and for the second time, Junior babysat Juniorette. It's really a new chapter in life when your kids aren't small anymore!
My mom cooked us dinner to celebrate her birthday.
And you, Dear Reader? What did you do for fun this weekend? Read the comments on this post...

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There's a parliamentary election in Sweden on the 19th, and everybody's hoping that the country's little right-wing populist party won't get over the 4% threshold needed to grab any seats. The "Swedish Democrat" party mainly offers a We Hate Foreigners ticket, with some Law & Order and Respect Your Elders thrown in to attract voters in the early stages of Alzheimer's.

The SD is generally despised among mainstream political parties and the media. So I was surprised but entertained when I found the ailing Swedish Church trying to smear the Swedish Humanist Association by means of a far-fetched guilt by association involving the SD.

The Reverend Elisabeth Gerle works for the church's secretariat for theology and ecumenics, and also teaches ethics at the departments of theology in Lund and Uppsala. A press release on the church's web site advertises her forthcoming book, whose title translates to "Dangerous Simplification. Religion and Politics From the Perspective of the Swedish Democrats and the Swedish Humanist Association". Here's her argument (and I translate):"The Swedish Democrats have strong xenophobic traits that many politicians denounce. With regard to the Humanists, though, the authorities and politicians appear blind to the fact that an aggressive hostility to religion also targets recent emigrants. Is it possible that the Humanists are paving the way for the Swedish Democrats?"This is of course such poor logic that it borders on the unethical. Gerle's argument is that if I dislike woolen hats in general, then this means that I am specifically and discriminatingly hostile to green woolen hats.

The SD are hostile only to certain ethnic groups. The Humanists are hostile to all religions. The only ways the comparison between the two organisations might work would be if either a) the Humanists targeted only certain religions, or b) the SD were hostile to all ethnic groups including Swedes. Neither is true. Furthermore, the SD wants to kick people out of the country. The Humanists want them to stay and become secularised like everybody else here.

The Dept of Theology in Uppsala used to share a staircase with the Dept of Philosophy. Philosophy undergrads often (unethically) removed two letters from the theologists' sign in the entrance, changing Teologiska to --ologiska. Ologiska means "illogical"...

Via Olle Svensk Strand and Jens Runnberg.

[More about atheism, humanism, xenophobia, politics; ateism, humanism, sverigedemokraterna, val2010, främlingsfientlighet.] Read the comments on this post...

Earlier last month and in July, I had the awesome opportunity to participate in a four-week field season at Angkor Wat, under the University of Sydney’s Greater Angkor Project.
Unit 2, located near the West Gopura of Angkor Wat

The project team was led by Dr. Miriam Stark from the University of Hawaii. For this phase of the Greater Angkor Project we were looking for evidence of habitation within Angkor after its ‘collapse’ in the 14th century. For most of the season I was assigned to work at Unit 2, a 2x3m pit located along the main causeway, near the Western Gopura. In this unit we were trying to confirm the results of a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) scan that Till Sonnemann, a PhD student from the USyd, had conducted a year before.
Till Sonneman (bottom left, in black), discussing the stratigraphy of Unit 1.
The GPR scan of the southwestern quadrant of Angkor Wat revealed the presence of building foundations. Unit 2, where I was working at, was to determine the veracity of the scan and we were expecting to hit some sort of wall.
The crew at Unit 2 discussing a feature uncovered during the excavation.
Our typical day at work:

However, most of the excavations were conducted on the side of Angkor Wat, in the eastern side which was heavily forested. There we opened several units over where we thought we might be able to find signs of post-Angkoran habitation. These areas were more remote and less frequented by tourists, but we definitely found a lot of mosquitoes!
Excavations in the eastern forested areas of Angkor Wat
It was a great four weeks and a real experience to work with so many different and great people. Definitely one of my highlights for the year =D.
The crew of GAP AWT 2010

[More about archaeology, metaldetecting; arkeologi, metallsökare, Uppsala.]

The view from my second investigation area. The great barrows were erected about AD 600.

I spent Tuesday and Wednesday metal-detecting for my buddy John Ljungkvist on some of the most storied soil in Sweden: Old Uppsala. Archaeology and early historical sources unanimously point this village out as one of the Lake Mälaren region's most important power centres from shortly before AD 600 until about 1250, when it was superseded by the nearby town of (New) Uppsala. My Östergötland project in 2004-2009 largely aimed at searching for that province's unknown equivalent.

The view from my first investigation area. Old Uppsala church is the re-purposed remains of a larger 12th century cathedral. The green mound to the right is one of the platforms that supported the royal mead halls during the Viking Period.

John put me to work in two fields: one immediately below the monumental house platforms north of the church, one in a ploughed-out part of the famous barrow cemetery south of the church. Finds were plentiful but mostly not very old. I found copper coins from 1718 and 1721, another illegible one most likely from about 1700, and at the very end of the fieldwork, a mount from the butt-end of a 14th century table knife. I look forward to returning!

Finds pics below the fold. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

We’re all done here in Halland, for this time around. Tomorrow we set sail, or rather start up the Land Rover, for Västra Götland County and Lilla Edet. In Lilla Edet we’ll have one or two days work, again a survey for coming wind farm, though a small one.
Lets find out what awaits us…

Magnus Reuterdahl

Grötkräkla, "porridge sceptre"

The Four Stone Hearth blog carnival first opened its gaudy tent flap almost four years ago, in October 2006. Since then, 50 blogs have hosted it, 32 of which are still active. The record for most 4SH hostings is shared by Afarensis and Remote Central, both of which have hosted seven carnivals. Well done, everybody!

Here are the submissions for the 100th instalment:Krys at Anthropology in Practice discusses the Piltdown hoax.
Dan at Neuroanthropology writes about linguistic relativism, the idea that our language forms our world rather than the other way around.
Raymond at The Prancing Papio presents a study suggesting that a girl having brothers delays her menstruation and sexual activity.
Eric (formerly of The Primate Diaries), meanwhile, discusses a paper on the evolution of menopause in women.
Franco at Culture Potion talks about eskimo art with loads of wonderful pics.
Ciarán at Ad Hominin discusses the recent study suggesting that tool use may be a million years older than we thought.
Judith at Zenobia presents Queen Boran who was made Great King of Persia in AD 629.
Colleen at Middle Savagery talks about archaeological field schools and management styles.
And finally, I've got a paper out that stimulated some interesting blog discussion regarding the goals of archaeology.The carnival rarely gets many submissions: as you can see, even this even-number instalment got only nine counting my own. This means that bloggers don't care much about the Four Stone Hearth. Does the carnival have regular readers that follow it around to the various venues where it appears? Dear Reader, if you are a committed 4SH regular, please say so in a comment.

Blog carnivals seem to be going out of fashion. The Skeptics' Circle, The Tangled Bank and The Carnival of the Godless have all folded. Months pass between instalments of the History Carnival. And I've decided to let go of the Four Stone Hearth. Anybody want to take over as its coordinator? I've paid the domain registration for the next twelve months. Will #100 be the last time the Four Stone Hearth is lit? Read the comments on this post...