April Pieces Of My Mind #2

• Here’s how a 1st millennium back-yard iron furnace works. It’s like grilling bacon (ore) until all the fat (silicate slag) has dripped away, and continually adding more bacon until you have a hefty chunk of solid meat protein (iron). The grill consists of charcoal. A puddle of grease (slag) is left behind at the bottom of the furnace. The reason that the protein chunk doesn’t sink into the grease puddle is that it’s relatively cold in the grease collection pit. Each droplet of grease solidifies as it lands. Eventually you get a thick layer cake of solid grease, whose viscosity is high enough for it to support the weight of the protein chunk.
• So pleased that three of my young excavation participants from fieldwork in recent years have a) gotten good jobs in archaeology, b) joined the exclusive club that I like to call Chinese Spouse Fandom.
• Even if you and your friends don’t play music, you should take professional band photos now and then and release them.
• Listening for years to Fredrik Strage’s interview podcast, I have been struck by how self-perpetuating rock’n’roll mythology is. Rock gods almost universally report that they didn’t enter rock mainly because of a passion for music, but because Kiss blew their minds with their image when they were twelve. “I had to learn to play the guitar because that was the only way to become a rock god.”
• The public tends to believe that archaeologists want to excavate interesting sites that come to their attention. This is true in many cases. But almost no archaeologist has a paid job that lets them excavate interesting sites that come to their attention. This is confusing and frustrating to the public.
• Submitted a pretty gruesome journal paper titled “Human skull manipulation in Vendel-Viking Period Sweden and Denmark”.
• Ladies, beware! If he says he wants to clothe you in silks and velvets, then he isn’t your generous passionate lover. He is a gay fashion designer!
• Hey gender studies scholars! I’ve cycled into town while listening to a podcast about 1920s horror fiction, I’ve attended an art-historical guided tour of a cinema, I’m having a cup of hot chocolate and a piece of extremely decadent chocolate mousse cake named “Elliot”. And I am ready to do an in-depth interview about traditional cis-het Swedish masculinity!
• In 2019, J.E. Macedo de Medeiros defended his PhD thesis in archaeology at the Albert-Ludwig University in Freiburg. He was so confident of the importance of his work that he titled it Hoard finds of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages: a process-logical paradigm shift (my transl.). Five years later, no such shift has to my knowledge taken place.
• I had to check. You have to cross at a minimum three national borders to travel from Iran to Israel. This threat of war is like if Portugal were menacing Switzerland.
• For a fine example of Swedes not being able to say ‘dj’, listen to the excellent 1992 hit song “Stone Me Into The Groove”. “Oh, my saviour, my friend, yust take me away”
• I don’t know about other scientists and scholars, but man, I love my source material / study objects. I’m a pro, not an amateur, but sometimes I feel more akin to those who approach archaeology for love, in their spare time. Amator in Latin.
• Hopefully there will be a NASA rover on the south pole of the Moon less than a year from now.
• One of the many ways people mystify me is in their need to get out of their heads. It’s spring cleaning day in our housing area. In shrubberies within 100 m of our house I found packaging for alcohol, nitrous oxide and tramadol. I think everybody should just read a book instead.
• I met a man the other day who told me he worked as a “backender”. I was confused: surely this is the opposite of “boob man”?