Archaeological Fatherhood

Burnt Mound Near the Sea

Not Resting Place of the First Finns

Current Archaeology 237
Current Archaeology's December issue offers one of the mag's signature feature write-ups of new books, this time The Complete Ice Age: how climate change shaped the world by Brian Fagan et al. Interesting stuff, where the following passage on the coming of our own species into Ice Age Europe struck me as particularly illuminating:"In the past, climate change had either forced movement or engendered physical evolut

Ancient Remains Outlined in Street Pavement
Today's schedule was 5 hours on trains to Lund, 6 hours in Lund giving a talk, and 5 hours on trains home. In Lund I saw the outline of a very early church foundation picked out in the overlying street pavement near the Cathedral. And I was reminded of other archaeology I've seen thus outlined: the chancel apse of Stockholm Cathedral and the great stone ship at Stångebro near Linköping. It's a pretty cool way to show the many-layeredness of a spot that would otherwise just be asphalt. Dear Reader, have you seen any interesting archaeology outlined in an overlying street pavement?

Wesa Perttola Makes Great Maps
In Helsinki a few weeks back I made the acquaintance of my charming colleague Wesa Perttola. Now he has made excellent distribution maps for my forthcoming Östergötland book. Above is the scatter of 9th and 10th century elite indicators (big black dots) against a background of 6th-8th century indicators (smaller grey dots) and farms named Tegneby ("thane's farm", stars). Wesa tells me that he is currently available for more GIS and

Why Malt the Barley for Beer?
Dear Reader, usually the deal here on Aard is that I tell you what to think and you reply, zombielike, "Yes... Master... Kill... Kill...". But today, let's turn the tables. I'm going to ask a question about a simple scientific-culinary matter that has baffled me for decades. And I hope someone out there knows enough about yeast to enlighten me.When starved of oxygen, yeast turns sugar into alcohol. When germinated, barley grains, by means of the enzyme amylase, turn some of their cons

Like an Elephant
My 6-y-o daughter usually sleeps really solidly over in her room and is not easily woken by sounds she's accustomed to. But this morning she told me over breakfast, "Dad, you and Mom made the weirdest noises last night and woke me. First Mom kind of whined and sneezed. Then nothing for a while. And then you started sounding like an elephant! You made one heck of a racket -- Det var ett jäkla liv." Read the comments on this post...