Cite this as: Winters, J. 2013 Editorial, Internet Archaeology 34. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.34.8
Billed in the press as the world's 'oldest calendar', Issue 34 has closed to a rather large bang with the publication of 'Time and a Place: A luni-solar 'time-reckoner' from 8th millennium BC Scotland' by Vince Gaffney and colleagues. Three weeks on from its release, it is still doing the rounds on Twitter and achieving a certain level of public consciousness with its own series of jokes.
And even a topic for the satirical Daily Mash website (readers of a sensitive disposition look away now).
The article contained a series of visualisations which of course could only be presented as part of the final publication in an online format, but another reason for IA being chosen as the place of publication was the ability to be responsive and to publish quickly without the restrictions of a print schedule. In this instance, the first draft was submitted to me on 19 June then peer-reviewed, edited, proofed and published by 13 July! I don't think I have ever worked harder and so quickly than I did in the days leading up to publication but the publicity received was probably worth it. I did learn a few things about the way the traditional press works and how press releases get circulated, chewed up and spat out with details (like links to the original source [cough]) slowly being edited out but all in all, it's a process I am more than happy to repeat.
July was definitely a good month for the journal as it also saw the release of 'A Late Roman Well at Heslington East, York: ritual or routine practices?' by Steve Roskams, Cath Neal, Jane Richardson and Ruth Leary and got its reasonable share of publicity too. The article is Open Access thanks to the support of by the Archaeology Department Research Committee at York, and was picked up by traditional press and new media alike, and shows what can be done by lifting your gaze above the trench edge.
It was always going to be hard to top those two articles in terms of publicity but the other articles in the issue should not be overlooked as a result. 'Being a Modern Human: essentialist and hierarchical approaches to the emergence of modern human behaviour' presents a novel approach to the relationship between population dynamics and material culture by recruiting hierarchical systems theory, 'A Sea of Small Boats: places and practices on the prehistoric seascape of western Britain' successfully applies landscape archaeology themes to maritime perspectives and 'Storing up Problems: Labour, Storage, and the Rural Peloponnese' is a nicely argued article on interpreting surface scatters.
Now, on to issue 35!
Internet Archaeology is an open access journal based in the Department of Archaeology, University of York. Except where otherwise noted, content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC BY) Unported licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that attribution to the author(s), the title of the work, the Internet Archaeology journal and the relevant URL/DOI are given.
Terms and Conditions | Legal Statements | Privacy Policy | Cookies Policy | Citing Internet Archaeology
Internet Archaeology content is preserved for the long term with the Archaeology Data Service. Help sustain and support open access publication by donating to our Open Access Archaeology Fund.