It’s time we had a de-lurk around this here blog! The last one was over a year ago. If you keep returning to this blog but rarely or never comment, you are a lurker, Dear Reader, and a most welcome one too.
Please comment on this entry and tell us something about yourself – like where you are, what your biggest passion is, what you’d like to see more of on the blog. And if you are a long-time lurker who has de-lurked before, re-de-lurks are much encouraged!
Aardvarchaeology - by Dr. Martin Rundkvist 
We , my wife I, have been interested in archaeology for many years working on rock art of the Fremont culture. I have expanded my interest to include European and Canadian early history. My main interest any more is environmental history and the influences of culture adapting to the land (Telluride area had a large population of Finns at a elevation of 9,000 feet and very long winters, with gold and silver mines). We have many friends in the Southern Ute tribe, enjoy culture. I read and enjoy your blog everyday, even with your game playing. Hartley
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Interesting stuff, Hartley! I regularly fraternise with Chinese, Finns, Germans and Persians, but none of my friends are to my knowledge Southern Ute. Say hi to your wife!
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Still reading, still lurking, still making scabbards etc….
See you at Gamla Uppsala in May?
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Hey Matt! Yes, I’ve put you guys into my calendar!
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I lurk around several of the ScienceBlogs to keep apprised of what is happening in the world of various sciences and also in the anti-science realm. Archaeology is an especially interesting area. It is fascinating to watch as new discoveries change the landscape that I was taught in my youth.
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Hi, Martin,
A lurker allright, but doing my best to keep track on what you are up to. Not doing much archaeology anymore, but trying to get archeoinfo easily available, linked and open.
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Hi, Martin!
I only follow your blog sporadically, and then usually for your entries on Viking and Vendel period archaeological discoveries, but I also enjoy your posts about board games. I find it interesting which of my favorites do, and don’t show up on your favorites lists. For example, your October most played list included Innovation, Lost Cities, and 7 Wonders, all of which I like, but I’m also very fond of Puerto Rico, Ticket to Ride, and Power Grid, and I haven’t heard of most of the other games on your October list.
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I agree, Puerto Rico, Ticket to Ride and Power Grid are great fun! We rarely play the two former though because everybody except me is kind of tired of them. But we did play Power Grid just the other week, introducing a smart noob lady to the hobby.
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My name is Ullis and I’m a lurker. I lurk because one of my big passions in life is archaeology (it started with dinosaur magazines when I was three), and I don’t comment because I don’t actually spend enough time studying it to have much gifted things to say about your topics.
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visiting site permanently if something interesting for me:)
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Cool Sergii! I was in Crimea last fall and liked it a lot.
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I don’t know it it’s just a screw-up on my screen, but your comment numbering scheme runs backwards, with the newest being always #1. What defeats the purpose of comment numbering, as you cannot refer to any comment by a permanent number.
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I know, it’s incomprehensible! I’ve told tech support about it and they are really confused.
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Australian-born civil engineer of mostly northern European descent working/living permanently among a Chinese family and community.
Martin – just got back from taking the daughter to Taipei for a holiday before she returns to uni for her BSc honours year (Biochemistry and Genetics), and was totally gobsmacked by the collections, mostly by the bronzes (although after what seemed like several hundred, she and I were joking rather cynically about “Seen one ancient Chinese bronze vessel, you’ve seen ’em all”) and Neolithic pots, although I fell in love with the Southern Song green ware. I actually prefer the National Museum of History, which is very much less heavily patronised than the National Palace Museum, which tends to be fairly heavily dominated by Qing and Ming stuff for what may be self-evident reasons and heaving with foreign tour groups. Not that I have anything against the Ming and Qing, but it’s a lot more informative to see a good spread from the Neolithic all the way through to the Qing. Through sheer exhaustion, I gave up and sat nursing a coffee while she single-handedly mounted an assault on the calligraphy section, which she told me afterwards including a fair number of life-like paintings.
She of course had to read every single word on every single placard on every single museum exhibit in two languages, noting crossly where there were obvious errors and discrepancies between the Chinese and English descriptions, and resenting having to stop for 30 minutes for a bit of lunch, plus dragged me all over a beautiful and well preserved Qing Dynasty house (i.e. large compound of multiple structures), not to mention tramping all over Taipei 101, which was the world’s tallest building at 509 metres until it was overtaken by the Burj Khalifa in Dubai in 2010, my feet were aching on the home journey after having been constantly on my feet/dragged around for 3 full days.
Well worth it, though. And nice welcoming people. I shall be going back to Taiwan for sure, one way or another, either to do some work there or just to hang out with the delightfully charming people and search around for more collections and old buildings.
One word of warning – the air quality in Taipei is diabolical, and the armies of scooters running everywhere on the roads will drive you nuts. They drive the locals nuts.
Sorry, that’s a sort of combined delurk and news update for the Boss.
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John, I’ve been twice to the Southern Song imperial pottery museum in Hangzhou! Lots of lovely celadon. There’s still a big ceramics market nearby, largely dealing in toilets and washbasins…
Did you know that the colonisation of Polynesia took off from pre-Han Taiwan?
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Been a lurker for a couple of years. I am a marine biologist (Ph. D. – nearing retirement) who has a number of eclectic interests including N. European archaeology.
I find your take on things refreshing and interesting. Sometimes, the topics you discuss are unfamiliar to me, and thus I must do some (enjoyable) research on the web to get a passable understanding of the topic. So… I lurk to learn, and I thank you for the opportunity.
Cheers, Ron
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Martin, yes.
One of the museums we did not have time to get to was the Taiwan Aboriginal Museum. Next time. Being an obvious believer in the cultural superiority of recent Han/Northern European hybrids, that was something my daughter put lower on her list of priorities hahahahaha 🙂
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I’ve delurked before, but will try it again. I’m a washed up archaeologist, working in a call center. Too stove in by age to do much in digging or leading survey crews through rough country, I’m taking classes at a technical school to try and get more employable with computers. I hope to return to archaeology someday, though I’m not sure when it will be. I like to at least read about someone doing archaeology and largely follow your blog for that reason.
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Very good to have you all here, guys!
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(OT) Olives: ‘Tree of life’ has Kurdish roots, study finds http://phys.org/news/2013-02-tree-life-kurdish-roots.html Richard III’s face revealed for first time in 500 years http://phys.org/news/2013-02-richard-iii-revealed-years.html
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Hello Martin and all other readers.
I am certainly a lurker at this place… but I am happy to here often find many entries to interesting history related reports.
Thanks for sharing all this info, Martin!
My own practical touch at archaeology is only related to the analysis of tree rings – I have developed software for measurement and analysis of tree rings.
When old wood is found sunk in lakes their tree rings might tell a story of climatic change. Also the current growth of trees is of interest both for climate researchers but also for current forestry research.
Tree ring analysis can also be used to settle the time when an old house was built. A friend of mine, Torbjörn Axelson,
has dated, documented and taken photos of a terrible lot of houses in his neighbourhood in “Dalarna” but also of wind mills on the island of “Öland”, see
http://taxelson.se/dendro/obj/index.htm and http://taxelson.se/dendro/oland/Gk.htm
Though now my main interest in history is related to the Early Middle Ages and on proving whether there are any “invented years” within this period or not.
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Feels good to know you’re keeping an eye on me, Åke!
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Aardvarchaeology (with 4 A’s!) is on my list of daily-read science blogs, most of which are related to archaeology and linguistics. I have no education in either field; I’m just an interested armchair. (Well, not entirely armchair– I was just looking at my photos of megaliths and petroglyphs in France and Sweden. Also, I use language just about every day.) I’m more interested in prehistory than history, and Europe and North America than elsewhere. I’m in Richmond VA, which is a great area for flatwater kayaking, which is a great activity for beachcombing (which often involves more recent archaeology, otherwise known as “Why in the world did you pick that up? Why in the world did you keep it?”. My brother tells me that I’m the only person he knows who decorates with debris.)
I enjoy Aardvarchaeology, both the information and the attitude. Keep up the good work.
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Thanks Michael! I imagine that beachcombing in Virginia might be quite a worthwhile pastime.
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(OT) “Study shows cultural flow may be slower than genetic divergence” http://phys.org/news/2013-02-cultural-slower-genetic-divergence.html
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Like archaeology, like your relaxed style. Lurking because I like a comment to have an added value. From The Netherlands, passion is Early Medieval History (but not Arthur please) and cricket (the game).
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Birger, interesting study!
J.K., thank you!
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The Netherlands? Not familiar with the early medieval period in the region. Pre-Roman times there was a people with a language distinct from the celts and germans but I assume no linguistic traces remained by the time monks started writing down stuff.
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My comments are infrequent but I always check the updates (and I even feed Martin some tidbits now and then 😉
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Tobias is a gentleman and a scholar! And I forgot to credit him for the latest two entries I wrote on his tip-offs.
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Been lurking here regularly for perhaps a couple of years now. I especially enjoy your scepticist entries on pseudoscience and views on the condition of contemporary archaeology in Scandinavian academic research and cultural heritage management – trying myself to make ends meet in danish contract archaeology.
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Good to see we have many women who are interested in archaeology. Much different from the scene less than a generation ago.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Bro-Magnons/ the glacial pace of rolling back misogyny:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/02/07/a-story/
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Birger: the substratum in Dutch is very speculative. But interesting. I don’t think I’m qualified to judge the scientific value of this theory. And you may have heard of the Franks? But there’s precious little written evidence for the period, but lots of very good archeology.
Try this free to view e-book: http://www.sidestone.com/books/rondom-de-mondingen-van-rijn-maas
and go to page 383 for the English summary.Also plenty bibliography.
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am I a lurker? my dear … and so behind on all these blogs too …
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(OT) Sorry for off-topic post : “Genetically engineered virus kills liver cancer” http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-genetically-virus-cancer.html
Skeptic Bat-signal!: -The usual crowd will come out and say “Noo, GM means Frankenstein, man was not meant to delve in these things” which is why others must make their voices heard. Saving people from cancer will not turn them into (insert horror film clicé of your choice).
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<<I'm guilty as charged, lurking in the first degree.
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So Martin was right about viral cancer treatments. Good.
There’s nothing natural about walkin’ around with half yer guts cut out.
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(OT) Farming arrived in Europe with migrants, isotopic data show http://phys.org/news/2013-02-farming-europe-migrants-isotopic.html
Computerized ‘Rosetta Stone’ reconstructs ancient languages http://phys.org/news/2013-02-computerized-rosetta-stone-reconstructs-ancient.html
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I like the word ‘Lurk’. It was either a loanword from the old Norse vikings that came to England or the other way round. Apparently from the old Norse Lurka which means to ‘Sneak away’. So a very appropriate blog heading from Stockholm. And it appears it was last famously uttered by Harald Hardrada when he was mortally wounded at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. His final words, which have meandered down from history “What’s that arrow lurking in my throat”.
Keep up the good work,
Ferdinand
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I wonder what Harold meant by that question. Did he want to know the type of arrow?
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Dear Martin, I have been guilty of lurking for over 6 years. Your website is one of only a few in my bookmark bar. I look forward to reading each of your posts. The paleolithic Scandinavian period is fascinating. My daughter is an archaeologist. I proofed all of her papers and acted as a shovel bum for non invasive surveying. In our area it is legal to metal detect and to surface collect. I am in contact with local archaeologists. Our prehistory appears at the demise of our last glaciation, about 14,000 BP.
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Not only have I been lurking here for years, I’ve linked your site to my own blog, which specializes in Science, History and Social events in the Pacific Northwest. I teach ten and eleven year olds Science, Literacy and Social Studies. I have Swedish roots and a profound interest in Archaeology. http://nosleinad6.wordpress.com/
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I am a BRAND NEW LURKER. I have always loved archaeology so I took the obvious career path into computers so I can feel like I am excavating the middle paleolithic every time someone wants me to fix an iMac Bondi Blue.
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