Archaeology and spying

There is a long history between archaeology, colonial rule and spying and in the halls of Cambridge one cannot avoid at least once hearing some murmuring about the past double roles. I must admit I myself was wondering the sponsorship of NATO for a remote sensing conference. It is quite clear that for that sort of organisation the real interest cannot be some mounds in a remote landscape, but potentially the modern structures in far-flung spaces, even if the archaeologists naturally heard of the newest and the most accurate methods. Although, nowadays all organisations have to show that they also serve ‘community’ and potentially military organisations want to show that their expensive equipment can be used peacefully.

Archaeologists can move around relatively freely and their wonderings in the landscape with maps and equipment is motivated by so-called good causes. We collect knowledge of heritage and write the history and prehistory of the human race. At the same time some people may wonder if some individuals have double reasons of taking a walk.

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (image source: http://greenparty.org.uk/people/jenny-jones.html)

This week bring about those memories of the Cambridge’s past fame as a source of agents when it emerged that a Green Party member of the Lords, Lady Jones, the former Green Party candidate for the London mayor’s post, had been put on the ‘extremist’ list and her political activities were followed. The same was done to Councillor Ian Driver, who is also a Green Party member. Naturally, this may be related to any environmental protesting, but it has not escaped me that Jenny Jones is a former archaeologist. In a previous life she has been specialised in Middle Eastern archaeology. Being Green and interested in Middle East may rise eyebrows.

Which just leaves me wondering how many other archaeologists may be on all kinds of following lists. There are those who have connections not only to Green Party, but perhaps and/or to peace movements, alternative living and CND. Ho hum, I have been recorded as well, since all the participants of the antinuclear marches were duly recorded by the Finnish ‘secret police’. However, they were so visible with their cameras and overactive finger action that their ‘surveillance’ was not really the best held secret on the planet.

Och samma på svenska – teaching more digital methods

This week was the start of my proper teaching at Stockholm. Even if I have given three research seminars and one lecture in the ‘Humans and metals’ course, my main responsibility is to be one of the teachers in the Volterra field school. This means three lectures on GIS and digital recording methods, two demonstrations and practicals, one lecture on Etruscan religion and burial customs and two weeks in Volterra supervising group exercises and practicals. I do all this in Swedish, even if we will build the database in English, since it will be available to the commune and the Superintendency in Tuscany.

Teaching coordinate systems

The main problem has been looking for the Swedish words for all those concepts I have always discuss and taught in English. Very often the Swedish use the English words as well in computing connections, but one has to prepare lectures with proper terminology. Luckily, the Landsmäteri and many universities had enough content, so I could find the terms but also some illustrations in Swedish. However, to add to my linguistic confusion, our ArcGIS version is in English, so after more theoretical content, I gave a demonstration that was peppered with comments such as ‘Add layer’ and ‘Display units’. Naturally, all Italian map layers available thanks to the INSPIRE directive have their downloading interfaces, names and information in Italian. Hopefully, this will make clear the rule 1 in Italian archaeology: "you really need to read and speak Italian".

I have now also ventured to photogrammetry and will be building models together with students. Sadly, laser scanning will be carried out another year, since ‘grant hunting’ has not been too successful and to be honest, there is only so much I can do as one person; I am already sorting out geographic reference system and physically getting the GPS equipment from Pisa to Volterra. It will be nice to wait for last year’s ‘laserscanner’ to return to continue his work. I am quite happy to concentrate to plan a town GIS and do photogrammetry of objects and buildings.

Old finds at Villa Lante in good use

The teaching was a pleasant experience, although it became clear that the content in the end is easily divided into two blocks (lectures on GIS, a demonstration on ArcGIS and an exercise dealing with a database table for archaeological monuments on one hand and the digital recording and the demonstration of the Agisoft Photoscan Professional on the other), so they should in the future be split between two days in order to guarantee that people learn the basics properly. Having ‘lighter cultural content’ in the afternoon, i.e., beautiful landscapes and objects from Etruria, will make the experience smoother. In this way, people will be able to absorb the technical content better.

Food, glorious food!

This week saw the last of the research seminars in Nordic/general archaeology and we had the last of the postseminars in one of the restaurants in Södermalm. I did not attend every session due to travel home to England or to Italy, but I got quite a good idea of the local offerings. Naturally, I and my family (when on a visit) have been quite loyal to the local “Näset” in the suburb of Näset on the island of Lidingö. It is a true through back to the late 1970s or early1980s – they even play the local ‘oldies hits’ radio station with Europe and Abba. The steaks are on planks and smothered with béarnaise sauce. But essentially: it is very good. My bookmaker’s toast has been constantly a quality meal for 100 krona and better than in much trendier and central “Belgobar”.

A little bit of Finland - or Åland - in Stockholm

“Belgobar” was our restaurant twice, but since I cannot eat mussels, I cannot enjoy the most Belgian of dishes. The beers are good but the food is a bit ‘mah’, but they bring nice bread before the standard hamburgers and the like. With Gavin Lucas we headed to the famous “Zum Franziskaner” when I had barely arrived. Really nice interior and lots of character and tradition, but pricey food, even if so-called ‘beer friendly’ and the standard was not really above the “Weatherspoons”, even if the prices were manifold. “Weatherspoons” came to mind of the “Bishops Arms” in Gamla Stad: food was quite cheap and the menu offered fishcakes and hamburgers. Inoffensive and good for beer.

The end seminar of Ingrid Berg now in the spring was celebrated in the Greek “Esperia”. It was not like any Greek restaurant I have visited before. The food looked beautiful and tasted excellent. The prices were far from cheap, but really modest, when you think about the quality of ingredients and presentation. Naturally, wine is painfully expensive in Sweden, but we shared a very lovely bottle – or actually two...

Of the traditional Swedish restaurants “Tennstopet” was superior to “Zum Franziskaner”, although the dinner room cannot really accommodate bigger groups. But the meatballs were lovely and, once again, bread was really nice. Nevertheless, we visited the best place last. The prices in “Kvarnen” were on the low side and the food was tasty and well made. The beer selection was excellent and the decor was older in a mix of German and Swedish style. We ate in the so called German hall and my reindeer in cream sauce was spot on. And the beer was cheaper than any were in the city centre I have seen. A krona cheaper than in Näset! I want to go back – and sooner the better.

Babas stand in the Taste Stockholm event

This weekend was Smaka Stockholm, Taste Stockholm, event. I passed by this lunchtime before heading to swim with the idea of having a lunch in a food festival atmosphere. There even was a Sweden’s best cook competition on the main stage, but I must say having cooks higher up and looking at a giant screen in order to actually see the cooking and food in the bright sunshine, is not as good as watching Mastercook in your own home. Nevertheless, the ‘Latino burger’ with beef stripes, red onion, tomato, avocado and chilli mayo was extremely good. I was really full, even if the portion had looked small. The stand was “Babas Burgers and Bites” that had been mentioned among the best hamburger places in Stockholm by the Arlanda Express onboard magazine. They were right. Now I just have to use a bit of Google Map in order to find where their restaurant is in the suburbs...

Sunday saw me finding out that I do not like ceviche, Peru's national food. As a consolation to all Peruvians, I do not like Finnish or Swedish sill either, no matter which sauce this herring has been put into and no matter how Finnish I am living temporarily in Sweden for work. Now I know how this hipster food tastes like, so I do not have to taste it any more. I also tasted some inoffensive, if soulless lamb curry with beer in the afternoon. Sadly, I could not fit in a pulled pork sandwich I saw some ladies munching.

Another Etruscan exhibition

Sometimes an exhibition can give you new information but still manage to be a little bit 'Bah humbag'. This time around that sinking feeling hit in the Cerveteri exhibition in the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. It had objects from the Tomba delle cinque sedie. Tick. It had really lovely painted plaques, the biggest single unique find from a known context at Cerveteri. A BIG plus. It had some less frequently seen Hellenistic and Roman art work. Bravo. However, the name of the exhibition, 'The Etruscans and the Mediterranean', conveys an idea that the exhibition could cover Etruria and its contact more widely, whereas in reality, it is more 'The story of Cerveteri'.

Similarly, there were large displays full of similar vases that adorn Villa Giulia and some interesting art work put in doorways or sideways so that most people would not notice them at all. For a specialist, the main text boards read very familiar from the books of the main authority providing the narrative. I probably should mention that most of the figures in the otherwise very interesting catalogue were very small. A few main finds got decent larger photographs, but many of the interesting items had tiny presentations.

The exhibition also meandered in a way that it would have easy to pass a section without noticing. One of the items in the beginning of the exhibition I almost missed, since I came upstairs using the wrong staircase, was a virtual 3D reconstruction of the famous Regolini-Galassi tomb. It was interesting to see the grave-goods placed in the burial chambers but the sticking point was the difficult to manoeuvre interface. May be I just moved clumsily, but turning around and seeing the little idols weeping from a suitable angle was hard work. Well, a way to get some exercise by waving hands in an exhibition.

One of the plaques in the exhibition (source: Wikipedia)

Nevertheless, the best part of the exhibition was totally unexpected. In the room where the research history at Cerveteri was described, there was a television screen showing old news films from the excavations. It was fascinating to see the tracks made for the spoil wagons on wheels and the people handing out pottery from the opened graves. In places one got a feeling that in older times people had a much more liberal attitude towards restoring or reconstructing the structures. Workmen just picked any piece of tuff and formed a nice rectangular block to fit into a wall in front of a burial niche. Hmm...

Even if the Etruscan exhibition did not make my imagination to fly, the Pasolini exhibition downstairs was a tasty dessert. A good double whammy of new professional information and a real story of a murder and new evidence with a Forza Italia connection in 2010. A cultured midday in Rome.

Mediterranean in Stockholm

In order to feel myself useful on a family-less weekend in Stockholm, I decided to visit the newly fully opened Medelhavsmuseet, i.e., the Mediterranean Museum. I had visited it years ago – and when I entered the exhibition, it showed me exactly how much in the prehistory that visit was. Not a single major display was where it was then – perhaps with the exception of the teaching displays and the gold collection that must have been even then in a safe room.

The main attraction this time was the fully renewed Egyptian collection that I must say is pretty comprehensive for a relatively small country such as Sweden. However, there used to be an Egyptological museum in Sweden – now incorporated in the Mediterranean Museum – and Egyptology is well and alive at the University of Uppsala. The Stockholm exhibition is of perhaps of a similar size and scope as the one at Cambridge, although the Swedish exhibition lacks any major sculpture. The pieces are relatively small, but it is the breath of the collection that is very good. The displays run from the Stone Age and predynastic times all the way to the 19th-century Cairo. Especially the small items such as wooden sculpture, games and foodstuffs are beautifully laid out.

Brick making and laying - I know who likes this image

The much trumpeted 3D scan of a mummy was a slight disappointment. Not because of the results but because it did take some time before different displays downloaded and the interface was not as smooth as I had expected. I should have remembered a presentation I heard in the CAA-UK about 18 months ago and realised that the touch-and-rotate technology on horizontal display tables is not always as smooth as one imagines on the basis of Startrek Enterprise.

Which side is the real one?

The Greek collection is a standard display and the Roman collection is not much – except when one checks the teaching collection displays upstairs. There are some further, rather beautiful small sculpture and other pieces there. The second major item in Museum’s collection is the Cypriot collection. The tale of the Swedish excavations on Cyprus was celebrated in an art exhibition at the year’s turn in the Moderna Museet and discussed in a research seminar at the University. The Swedes studied mainly the northern coast of Cyprus in the 1920s and 1930s under the British colonial rule. The most significant find is the huge collection of clay idols, models and statues from a ritual display from . Half of this collection is still on Cyprus, but with the clever use of mirrors the visitor is given the illusion of the whole set up. Animals, soldiers, men and women arranged in a triangular format radially away from a white stone on an altar. Amazing find – even if the ‘curse of Gjerstad’ had stricken there as well. Instead of an extraordinary evolutionary pottery typology elsewhere, here he had apparently dreamt up a non-existent series of reoccurring floods.

Researchers inspect with pith helmets on

The most interesting section was not an object display at all. The honour from my part goes to a photographic series that presented the Swedish excavations in Egypt. The astonishing part was not that the Swedes had run or participated in them. Instead they were the photos themselves that stood as testimonies of changing times. I must say the scholars probably could not guess in the early 20th century how hopelessly colonial the pith (safari) helmets will look like in the 21st century. As was customary, the villagers did the digging and sieving and the directors the inspecting, finds processing and mapping. At least one archaeologist was wise enough to sport a beret instead of the pure ‘colonial look’. The contrast could not have been bigger to the 1960s Abu Simbel jigsaw puzzle and the bearded archaeologists and building workers at site. Huge vehicles and cranes moved sawn stone and a beautiful lake-side temple moved onto an empty spot in a moon-like landscape. Priceless!

Losing yourself

The last two weeks have been very stressful for an absurd reason I am not going to discuss, yet, but things could apparently be so much worse that I do not complain.

I visited briefly the Stockholm Seriefestival, even if the wonderful warm weather drew me elsewhere for the most of the weekend. The very interesting presentation on the gender stereotypes in manga was by a cartoonist Natalia Batista, who herself has drawn Swedish manga. This talk presented the different types, the cute girl, the spectacled boy and girl, the gloomy girl and the prince among others to the full Plattan (well, the seats are only about 30 or 40). These cartoons are age and gender specific, so there are different specialist magazines and collection volumes for e.g. tweeny girls and middle-age gentlemen who like sailing.

I was especially intrigued by the maids and butlers – who are exactly what it says in the name. 19th-century English maids downstairs and butler-like males who serve female readers every fancy – at least in their dreams. Most of the cartoons are not XXX material, so we are mainly talking about daydreaming and everyday escapism here. The really interesting thing was that in Japan they have maid and butler cafes where people can buy company of a maid or a butler for a day. It seems that nowadays a part of the declining population figures in Japan are blamed on manga. And I can see why the career ladies in their twenties who are so-called parasite youth who live at home and have high salaries prefer having a fanciful, gentleman butler for a relaxing day instead of a real boyfriend.

The other extreme of the spectrum was outlined by a colleague whose family was involved in a way in one of those awful stories in the newspapers. It turned out that the culprit was in a world of one’s own having been playing a certain video game since eight years old. Instead of dealing with sometimes irritating human beings, it was easier to just hit and run, play a game, relate to fellow humans in a way an assassin sees a target. No pity, no sympathy, no feelings, except perhaps anger and selfpity. Maybe one has to reconsider son’s tablet use...

That is the way other people lose themselves. However, I was only loosening myself in Stockholm in Eriksdal’s steam sauna... Or sitting on a terrace in Gamla Stan... I do feel sometimes like escaping from the reality, but I just think I will keep within innocent daydreaming!

It is a house

After some hectic weeks I am having more busyness – this time in Rome. The old sins need sorting out and new plans consolidating, formulating, reformulating and adapting. However, this time around I manage to slip in writing my blog that once again was not my first priority last week.

View of Villa Lante by Teresa Maria (An Amateur's Adventures on Life)

I am staying in a splendid house – a 16th century villa from where I can see all Rome at my feet. This house is Villa Lante, the Finnish Institute, where I am staying once again, since I am just on a short visit the Swedish Institute normally does not accommodate. Since the Finnish Institute celebrated around the May Day, the First of May, its 60th anniversary, it is fitting to laud the place where I have done so much work and that has supported me through the years. The directors come and go, but the house stands firm on the Gianicolo Hill and allows very different scholars and artists come together and exchange ideas. It also allows the Finns an access to the International circle of institutes and the Italian academic landscape.

I first arrived in 1990 and even if I did not expect to return soon, I have stayed here many times over these almost 25 years. I have stayed in every single scholars’ room and the director’s guest room as well. The only place I have not stayed is the director’s flat, but there is a long queue, so I may have to wait for some time. However, as long as I can return and enjoy the friendships and discussions, I can live without. Even if it would be lovely.

No, I was not there (photo by Institutum Romanum Finlandiae)

I have just spent half a week in the house at the same time as the ‘scientific course’ and heard many stories about the 60th anniversary celebrations. Now most of the students have left, but there is another course coming and other lecturers and professors to meet. I can share a glass of wine with the Oxford emerita Margareta Steinby and discuss architecture with the architecture stipendiate. It was also possible to go to the Finnish Embassy for sauna. There is not quite a house like Villa Lante elsewhere (except for the Swedish Institute and the BSR and the American Academy and... if you come from another country).