A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

Last year I promised new beginnings. Now—thanks to the AJA Advisory Board, the Society for the AJA, and the Archaeological Institute of America—I am happy to report that those beginnings have come to fruition. The first article in the AJA’s State of the Discipline series was published in 2007, and this year will see the publication of installments on other seminal topics within archaeology. These articles are accompanied by bibliographies that are published on our website for free download and will be updated by the authors; we hope that students, particularly, will find these bibliographies useful. As promised, we have increased the scope of our newsletters, and we continue to seek them from parts of the ancient world not traditionally covered by the Journal. I invite readers who are interested in contributing newsletters to send me their proposals.

The past year also saw several key e-initiatives, including our online submissions process. In 2007, we launched the AJA e-Update, an email service that quickly and efficiently disseminates pertinent news to AJA subscribers. When you renew your subscription to the Journal, do not forget to include your email address so you may receive these valuable updates, and if you are considering submitting an article to the AJA, please use the electronic process on our website.

I am also pleased to announce that, with this issue, the AJA is offering electronic subscriptions in addition to the traditional print subscription. New and current subscribers may opt for either a stand-alone print or e-subscription, or may select a bundled subscription that includes both print and electronic access. The e-subscription is available via Atypon, an experienced provider of e-subscriptions for a number of academic journals like the AJA. We are very excited about our new e-subscription option, since it allows for quick and easy access to the Journal from your computer and includes PDFplus functionality, which, among other capabilities, features full-text and reference linking in a screen-ready and printer-friendly format. We believe this seamless access to other electronic scholarly articles will be very useful to you, our readers and subscribers. We are offering the stand-alone e-subscription and the bundled subscription at attractive, introductory prices, and we encourage our readers and institutional subscribers to consider whether an e-subscription or a bundled subscription would best fit their needs. In the interest of bringing AJA scholarly content to as wide an audience as possible, we will also offer reduced rates for e-subscriptions to institutions in developing countries. Please consult our website for up-to-date pricing information.

Beginning this year, AJA articles are no longer available as read-only PDFs on our website, but individual articles are now available for purchase electronically. We will still provide open access to reviews of museum exhibitions and books, State of the Discipline bibliographies, and our expanding archive of complementary images and data for select articles. Abstracts of AJA articles, accompanied by a photograph from the article, will also remain on our website, and from time to time, we will upload printable full-text PDFs of some articles. The Journal will continue to be a part of the JSTOR archive, and it is now included in CrossRef, a linking network that will enable readers of other electronic articles with references to the AJA to link directly to that AJA content.

By widening our electronic presence, we hope to expand our readership and make the Journal more accessible and visible within the growing world of electronic publication and research. Our mandate remains the same, however: to publish articles of the highest quality and importance “devoted to the art and archaeology of ancient Europe and the Mediterranean world, including the Near East and Egypt, from prehistoric to Late Antique times.” As Editor-in-Chief, I welcome the submission of manuscripts on any subject within that broad definition, especially those that announce discoveries, present new information, break new theoretical ground, or deal with methodological issues, even those that extend beyond our traditional geographical and chronological scope.

The start of a new year often means saying goodbye to friends and colleagues. With the April 2008 issue, long-time Book Review Editor John Younger steps down from a post that he has held with great distinction and passes the baton to Pedar Foss and Rebecca Schindler. Also in April, Elizabeth Bartman, who initiated and edited the museum exhibition reviews in the AJA, passes her baton to Beth Cohen. It has been my very great pleasure to work with John Younger and Elizabeth Bartman, and I offer them heartfelt thanks for all they have done for the Journal over the past years. They will be hard acts to follow, but I have every confidence that Pedar Foss, Rebecca Schindler, and Beth Cohen are up to the challenge.

Naomi J. Norman
Editor-in-Chief