Volume 4 - Editorial

EDITORIAL
Growing

Jaime ALMANSA SÁNCHEZ, Editor

Elena PAPAGIANNOPOULOU, Editor

As the journal is steadily growing, so are we along with it, not only in terms of age or experience but also in terms of people. For quite a few months we wanted to expand our editorial team and the right time finally came after publishing Volume 3, which has been rather successful in terms of submissions and readership. Since last winter, the team has grown from just two to seven. Thus, before anything else, we would like to express our warmest thanks to the new team members who have been working with us for the last nine months, helping us cope with the increasing workload more efficiently and making us confident that the journal is taken to the next level: Dom, Amanda, Kaitlyn, Alexandra, and Alejandra, there are no words to describe our gratitude for your work and commitment. We consider ourselves fortunate to have been joined by such a skilled and professional group of people.

Similarly, we wish to warmly thank Kerry Massheder-Rigby and Dominic Walker for editing our first Special Volume which was published earlier this year and constitutes, together with Volume 4, a big step for AP Journal towards keeping its promise and fulfilling its commitment to ensure more quality content. Although we had planned the release date for Volume 4 for the summer, we decided to push it back to autumn in order to give the Special Volume adequate time in the front page.

Volume 4 opens with the continuation of our forum series on looting, which this year focuses on conflict. This volume also includes a forum entitled “Archaeology as a tool for peace”. Unfortunately, the leading paper has been withdrawn; however, we could not let go of the topic as a whole, especially since this second forum had already been set around it. Conflict and looting was going to be the focus of the first forum, and we wanted peace to be the focus of the second, especially after the latest events in Gaza, which we must also condemn. As professionals of archaeology, we have a lot to say and do about this unsustainable situation. You can find more details below, in the introductions to the fora.

This volume also includes three papers that can be grouped in two broad categories of topics: visitor and/or community engagement with heritage sites, and the public image—and illusion—of archaeology. Ignacio Rodríguez Temiño presents the results of a digital engagement project from the Facebook page of Conjunto Arqueológico de Carmona, Spain. Marxiano Melotti reflects on the relation between myth and archaeology in public attractions that use evoking images of the past. Finally, Jaime Almansa Sánchez analyses the image that porn holds up regarding archaeology and the past.

Our Points of You this year has Occupy Museums as its starting point. This continuing movement started three years ago as an offshoot to Occupy Wall Street and has since grown in different fields. Yannis Hamilakis questions whether or not it should permeate archaeology.

Reviews are usually undervalued in the academic world; do not miss ours though, as they can offer more than a book summary. We really hope they are useful for you, reader, to choose and reflect on. The quantity of books received is increasing year by year, so we will try to make a good choice and offer variety and topicality. From now on, we will only publish a selection of eight book reviews per volume, but we will link them with the new reviews section of the blog, where other events (and even more books) will be reviewed.

As far as the blog is concerned, this year we also launched two new sections with the aim to offer more timely information: First of all, a link to PhD theses about public archaeology that are available online. Please tell us about yours if it is not in the list and you want to share it. Secondly, an events calendar where we (and you) can share upcoming public archaeology related events taking place worldwide. If you are attending any, share it with us and remember you can also review it.

We are proud to present you a range of topics that we hope will be of interest to you as much as they are to us. We really hope you will find this new volume both useful and stimulating, and invite you to participate in the journal. We are sure you have great stuff to share with the world. Enjoy Volume 4!

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Finally, before closing the editorial, we should make a few announcements:

1. Call for debate:

We will link all the forums in the blog so that you can follow the thread and comment on topics that we find very interesting and do not deserve to die with the publication of each volume. We still want debate to go on during the year and believe this section of the blog will make that happen.

We hope that more of our readers will engage with our online platforms (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and, of course, our blog) through comments, guest blog posts and participation in debates when they arise. If you have any specific topic in mind that you want to write about, we are open to suggestions.

2. Call for papers:

Volume 5 will be published in 2015 and the final deadline for submissions is set for 31 January 2015. Since the number of papers received keeps increasing, we wish to receive papers for our next volume as soon as possible so that there will be enough time to work patiently and get things done in a timely, consistent manner. In case you have any questions or doubts, please feel free to contact us.

3. Call for donations

JAS Arqueología will continue to take care of and publish this journal for as long as it exists. The philosophy of this journal—and of its editors—is to provide the widest access at no cost for both authors and readers. AP is—and will remain—a free-access and not-for-profit journal, thus, sustainability is an issue; the journal costs, in terms of both money and time invested. By enlarging the team we took a step in the right direction. The rest is up to you: our readers.

Keeping the journal an open-access and ad-free publication, which is to us as important as it is to you, means its future depends on your support. Should you wish to support AP Journal, you can do so either directly, through donations, or indirectly, by buying a hard copy of any of the existing volumes.

So if you find any stimulation in AP Journal, please consider a modest donation. We will be grateful for your support and donations make a big difference, no matter how small the amount. At this point, we should warmly thank and express our gratitude to our donors.

We remind you that there are two options:

• Direct donation via PayPal on our web page.
• Purchase of the hard copy. There is a fixed price of 10€. Just ask us.