sey075

First I had a paper rejected from the journal Science. Now I've evidently been removed from the Editorial Board of the journal Reviews in Anthropology . Wow, is my career going down the tubes? What's next? Will my students leave me for another adviser? Will NSF ask for their money back? Will my artifacts in Mexico be put out on the street? I'm not too surprised to find that my tenure on the board of Reviews in Anthropology is over. They just changed editors, and I wondered if the editorial board would turn over too. Some journals have entrenched boards, people who serve for decades; others have regular procedures for turnover in the board. I think the latter policy is best. But I didn't know how RIA worked, and I was a bit surprised to get the new issue (41-1) and find that I am no longer listed with the board. Well, that's fine with me, but it would have been nice to get some kind of a notice about this. Something along the lines of, "Thank you for  your serv...

Suppose you take a photo of your excavation, which happens to be within a modern town, and some bystanders end up in the photo. Later you want to publish the photo in a publication of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA). Guess what? They won't let you, unless you get a signed release form from every potentially identifiable person on the image. Well, since you took the photo several years ago, you won't be able to find those people, so you can't use the photo. Even if everyone in it is an adult, behaving legally in a public setting. Why the regressive policy by the SAA? Because perhaps someone might sue the SAA over such a photo. Not that this has ever happened, and the chances of it happening are infinitesimally small. And irrespective of whether scholarship and knowledge will be advanced by your photo. The current issue of The SAA Archaeological Record (March 2012) discusses this issue. John C. Whittaker wrote the SAA, complaining about the policy. He is clearly ou...

Many important concepts used by archaeologists are nebulous and ill-defined, and this is not good for the discipline. In the new revised edition of his excellent textbook on social science methodology, John Gerring (2012) has a chapter on concepts, and it has lots of go0d advice that would benefit archaeology. Gerring lists seven "criteria of conceptualization" that can be applied to the concepts we use (Table 5.1, page 117): Resonance.   How faithful is the concept to extant definitions and established usage? Domain.   How clear and logical is (1) the language community(ies) and (b) the empirical terrain that a concept embraces? Consistency.   Is the meaning of a concept consistent throughout a work? Fecundity.   How many attributes do referents of a concept share? (coherence, depth, richness, etc.) Differentiation.   How differentiated is a concept from neighboring concepts? What is the contrast-space against which a concept defines itself? Causal utility. ...

I just got an email from Jennifer Agar at Maney Publishing, publishers of the Journal of Field Archaeology. They are making 3 years of the journal free to download until May 15th (see the text of her message below). JFA is one of my favorite journals. They publish good archaeological data, with high-quality graphics. They are always quibbling over the artwork, insisting on improvements. Years ago, I wrote the editor to express my appreciation for their high standards on graphics. I said that authors always grumble and complain about having to re-do maps and figures, but the result is worth it, and very beneficial to the discipline. He liked the letter and asked if I would mind if they published it as a "Letter to the editor." And they are still at it. This morning I got word from them on a paper I submitted with a bunch of co-authors on our excavations at Calixtlahuaca. Although the reviewers liked the paper and only suggested a few minor changes, there is a long list of gra...