Much respect to this man as a fundraiser. He convinced people to pay him to play Viking and go sailing as his job. Could be grants or private fundraising or both.
It illustrates how one monetizes a PhD in a subject overtly noncommercial like archaeology. Plenty of people have sailed in these waters, maybe even played at being Vikings. But with a doctorate in the field, one is able to make the case that doing so will be Real Science because you have developed expertise in that knowledge domain, and research skills to fit whatever you find into the broader scientific context.
I’m not being dismissive, by the way, it’s a fantastic idea to explore for new archaeological finds. And it is absolutely true that academics need to have as much hustle as entrepreneurs to find funding.
So no, he did not "monetize" his PhD as he didn't have one while doing this fieldwork, and he paid for part of it himself.
Also, my high school grades got me a college scholarship. I don't interpret that as me monetizing my high school degree, but then, I don't view everything through a hustle lens.
His has "a general interest in ancient seafaring and experimental archaeology" with a focus on "reconstructing the sailing routes used by sailors from the Viking Age in Western Scandinavia". He "spent 11 months learning about traditional sailing and boatbuilding techniques at Fosen Folkehøgskole", "conducted a series of sailing trials and trial voyages onboard traditional clinker-built, square-rigged boats", and "spent about 500 hours sailing or rowing, often for several days at a time, enduring every kind of weather imaginable, in an attempt to test the performance of these boats under the widest possible range of conditions."
How do you get from that hard work to "playing Viking", without being dismissive?
Sure. In my 20s I remember telling my boss that I had so much fun programming that I would do it even if I wasn't paid. (That was probably a mistake, but at least it was a state job with salary guidelines.)
But having fun and playing as part of work is doesn't mean I was "playing programmer." Even had I been an unpaid trust-fund baby.
What does "play Viking" mean to you, and how do we know that's what this researcher is doing?
Would you also say that he "plays sailor", given that he's an actual sailor?
Should we say the people building the 13th- century style castle at Guédelon are playing serfdom?
Those trying to rediscover ancient building techniques are playing Egyptians, Romans, Eastern Islanders, Incans, etc.?
Was Thor Heyerdahl was "playing a 'Tiki person'" in his famous raft voyage, when that culture doesn't exist, or was he trying to demonstrate that the raft hypothesis for human migration could not simply be rejected as impossible?
> In terms of the results themselves, the boats are extremely seaworthy crafts. When you get in them for the first time, you don't think that, because they're very, very light. They feel very flimsy, and they're very low in the water compared to a modern sailing boat. So you feel really in touch with the wave, which is kind of scary. But because they're so flexible and because of the way they're rigged, they're actually really stable, even in big waves.
> "We kept going out thinking, 'Oh, this is maybe the limit of what this boat can tolerate,' and then it would be fine, and we'd be, 'Okay, let's go a little bit in slightly bigger waves with slightly stronger wind,'" Jarrett continued. "So I think our comfort zones definitely visibly expanded during that period. And I had the chance to work with the same crews over three years. By the end of those three years, we were doing stuff that we would never have been able to do at the beginning."
I can't help but be remembered of the discovery of the HMS Terror, one of John Franklin's missing ships. It was announced that it was discovered conveniently located in what was already called Terror Bay, and that the ship's masts were even sticking out of the water. The local Inuit of course knew it was there.
a true scientist: He even fashioned rudimentary blades out of his own frozen feces to test whether they could cut through pig hide, muscle, and tendon ... it did not work.
bored and shored? board boats of boards o'er fjords. might strike a chord, see a fnord, expand your gourd
> "The Viking Age ends in the 11th century, and we're talking about boats from 800 years later," he said. "But the construction techniques and the way they are rigged and their general performance characteristics are similar enough. Because this is a project about voyages and not a project about boat building, it seemed like a defensible analogy."
His guess - whether right or not - is that this ship-structure is similar enough that it serves as a possible way to identify possible Viking era landing places.
Boat designs change very slowly, so I would bet on his guess. Most changes would be in improvements in smaller technologies, e.g. improved nails, than in major hull shape changes. As I understand it, Vikings did use barge-like boats, but they mostly used the longboat form, and the major change to long boats is to make them longer to carry more, which doesn't change the draft that much.
To my mind, the greater change would have been to sea levels from the 11th century to now, which would alter landing spots more than the boat design.
There’s an old NOVA episode “This Old Pyramid” that applied experimental archaeology to the Egyptian pyramids: exploring how the pyramids were built by actually building one.
Going even further back in time, Kon-Tiki back in 1947 demonstrated it was indeed possible to travel on a balsa wood raft to get from South America to Polynesia, settling that part of the debate.
Of course, Heyerdahl's diffusion model was completely wrong, but that's a different topic.
> Others have tried to cook like the Neanderthals, concluding that flint flakes were surprisingly effective for butchering birds, and that roasting the birds damages the bones to such an extent that it's unlikely they would be preserved in the archaeological record.
I found this statement a bit alarming, as flint flakes being quite effective in butchering is quite well known — anyone who has practiced or studied “primitive living” ( that term doesn’t feel right…) would know.
However, that was not an explicit conclusion in the referenced paper, just by arstechnica. Not even a gripe, though, very interesting article!
Flint fractures conchoidally to produce edges as sharp as 30 angstroms - sharper than modern surgical steel which typically reaches only about 300-600 angstroms.
They're probably looking for something more specific than "can make something that works well enough for youtube", like seeing if an exact copy of flint found in a site yields the same leftover marks as found on other bones in the site, or something.
Also, it's one thing to say that with modern techniques and design that flint flakes work for the purpose intended,
it's quite another to say flint flakes as they would have been made in the neolithic can be used in specific ways not necessarily by design,
and then collect and write up all the findings in an academically rigorous way.
There's plenty of research on things that "everyone knows" which turn out to be not true,
so validating these ideas is still worthwhile science.
It illustrates how one monetizes a PhD in a subject overtly noncommercial like archaeology. Plenty of people have sailed in these waters, maybe even played at being Vikings. But with a doctorate in the field, one is able to make the case that doing so will be Real Science because you have developed expertise in that knowledge domain, and research skills to fit whatever you find into the broader scientific context.
I’m not being dismissive, by the way, it’s a fantastic idea to explore for new archaeological finds. And it is absolutely true that academics need to have as much hustle as entrepreneurs to find funding.
The article mentions how some archeologists learn flintknapping, which helps them understand their finds better.
Do you think they are playing Stone Age people?
For what it's worth, https://www.ht.lu.se/en/the-faculties/staff-training/interna... says funding came from Erasmus+ traineeship, several other grants, "and my own earnings", and he started while a grad student. (That page is from 2023.)
So no, he did not "monetize" his PhD as he didn't have one while doing this fieldwork, and he paid for part of it himself.
Also, my high school grades got me a college scholarship. I don't interpret that as me monetizing my high school degree, but then, I don't view everything through a hustle lens.
His has "a general interest in ancient seafaring and experimental archaeology" with a focus on "reconstructing the sailing routes used by sailors from the Viking Age in Western Scandinavia". He "spent 11 months learning about traditional sailing and boatbuilding techniques at Fosen Folkehøgskole", "conducted a series of sailing trials and trial voyages onboard traditional clinker-built, square-rigged boats", and "spent about 500 hours sailing or rowing, often for several days at a time, enduring every kind of weather imaginable, in an attempt to test the performance of these boats under the widest possible range of conditions."
How do you get from that hard work to "playing Viking", without being dismissive?
But having fun and playing as part of work is doesn't mean I was "playing programmer." Even had I been an unpaid trust-fund baby.
What does "play Viking" mean to you, and how do we know that's what this researcher is doing?
Would you also say that he "plays sailor", given that he's an actual sailor?
Should we say the people building the 13th- century style castle at Guédelon are playing serfdom?
Those trying to rediscover ancient building techniques are playing Egyptians, Romans, Eastern Islanders, Incans, etc.?
Was Thor Heyerdahl was "playing a 'Tiki person'" in his famous raft voyage, when that culture doesn't exist, or was he trying to demonstrate that the raft hypothesis for human migration could not simply be rejected as impossible?
Is it a sustainable career? He only recently got his PhD.
As a kid I dreamed about being a programmer (among many other things), and I am one.
If I bought an old PDP 11/70 to get hands-on experience on using early Unix systems work, would that mean I'm playing a Bell Labs researcher?
> "We kept going out thinking, 'Oh, this is maybe the limit of what this boat can tolerate,' and then it would be fine, and we'd be, 'Okay, let's go a little bit in slightly bigger waves with slightly stronger wind,'" Jarrett continued. "So I think our comfort zones definitely visibly expanded during that period. And I had the chance to work with the same crews over three years. By the end of those three years, we were doing stuff that we would never have been able to do at the beginning."
Sounds like they had fun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_Bay
bored and shored? board boats of boards o'er fjords. might strike a chord, see a fnord, expand your gourd
> "The Viking Age ends in the 11th century, and we're talking about boats from 800 years later," he said. "But the construction techniques and the way they are rigged and their general performance characteristics are similar enough. Because this is a project about voyages and not a project about boat building, it seemed like a defensible analogy."
His guess - whether right or not - is that this ship-structure is similar enough that it serves as a possible way to identify possible Viking era landing places.
To my mind, the greater change would have been to sea levels from the 11th century to now, which would alter landing spots more than the boat design.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1460448/
https://youtu.be/jD-EMOhbJ9U
My proudest moment (perhaps) was changing a tire without a jack a hundred miles from anywhere. I couldn’t raise the car, but I could lower the ground!
Of course, Heyerdahl's diffusion model was completely wrong, but that's a different topic.
I found this statement a bit alarming, as flint flakes being quite effective in butchering is quite well known — anyone who has practiced or studied “primitive living” ( that term doesn’t feel right…) would know.
However, that was not an explicit conclusion in the referenced paper, just by arstechnica. Not even a gripe, though, very interesting article!
There's plenty of research on things that "everyone knows" which turn out to be not true, so validating these ideas is still worthwhile science.