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The first editorial of Professor Martin Carver

Vol. 77 No.295 March 2003

ANTIQUITY has moved its office to the Department of Archaeology at the University of York (in north-east England) where it has been welcomed with excitement and affection. Long term subscribers will notice one or two novelties in our first edition: a new cover and a new internal structure and layout - and the web-site has also been given a make-over. We hasten to reassure readers that the editorial policy nevertheless remains the same as it has for 75 years - to present the results of recent research to the extended archaeological family. To do this successfully means expressing these results in plain language - something easier said than done. In these days of increasing specialisation, even researchers in different periods sometimes have difficulty understanding each other, while a thickening fog continues to rise between archaeologists in Universities and those serving the commercial sector. Our extended archaeological family includes not only all these professionals, and those of other disciplines with whom we work - chemists, linguists, geneticists - but people in other walks of life for whom the revelations of the past can provide a sustaining nectar. Thirty years ago your new editor was such a person, serving as the adjutant of the Fourth Royal Tank Regiment at Hohne in north Germany. Preparations for war had to be temporarily suspended on the day my new Antiquity arrived, while I devoured its contents as avidly as news from home, marvelling at the brilliant and troubled past of places (such as Russia, China and Iraq) reduced by the humours of the age to monochrome polygons on our military maps.

Change can be stressful in these overheated times, so we offer apologies to readers startled by the new cover and hope they will grow to like it. The intention is to bring the findings of researchers to a wider readership, something which has, of course, long been part of editorial policy. Our founder O G S Crawford, whose praises were chorally sung during 2002 (76: 1063-1125) wanted to sell Antiquity in station bookstalls. That is not expected to happen, but we might come to share a shelf with Nature, Foreign Affairs and other journals of the kind which attempt to present the top-rank scholarship of one field to another. This top-rank scholarship is what will continue to dominate our content in the form of peer-reviewed illustrated articles, but they will now be presented under three new headings: RESEARCH reports new theory, models, insights and ideas. METHOD reports new techniques or successful applications of old ones. And DEBATE is a section for response, argument and generally letting off steam about all matters which concern us. REVIEWS continue as before, but, as well as books, we have decided to review the work of television producers who now willy-nilly report so much of archaeology's research output. Finally we would like to remember the work and life our colleagues in OBITUARIES, and would be glad to receive contributions, when fate decrees. Notes and News in Colour has been moved to the website (now at http://antiquity.ac.uk) which has been enhanced to provide a broader range of services to the electronic visitor. The Project Gallery on the web-site is dedicated to interim reports about current research projects, and represents the rebirth of the Colour Section in a form which we hope will reach more people. Visitors can browse for the period and region they seek, read the synopsis they will find, and then, if they wish, pursue their interest by clicking on the URL of the home page of the originator. Also on the web-site will be found Letters to the Editor of which the most pertinent are likely to form the basis for future contributions to the DEBATE section of the journal. It remains a long-term dream to put the whole content of Antiquity since 1927 on the web-site where it may be accessed by researchers world-wide: the desirability and economics of this plan are still under discussion. At the editorial office we welcome your views on this and any other matters which may help the significance of archaeological research to be more widely appreciated.

This journal is dedicated to diversity, in the present as well as the past. It hopes to help provide a stage for new work from under-represented subjects, places and periods (field method, Africa and the most recent two millennia spring to mind). The oyster of our world also contains hidden pearls of CRM (Cultural Resource Management) the arena in which the majority of archaeologists currently earn their living. CRM has fielded some sensational projects, some known only to contractors and their clients, which deserve a broader exposure. In accordance with previous practice we also plan to put a spotlight on certain topics with guest-edited Special Sections - but issued as monographs rather than parts of the quarterly journal. Two in the pipeline concern recent work on the archaeology of Islam (Andrew Petersen aro_cbrl@nets.com.jo) and South America (Kevin Lane kjl25@hermes.cam.ac.uk).

Readers will also notice that our Advisory Editors have transmogrified into Correspondents. This signifies that they are to be more pro-active, helping to find new authors and encouraging them to publish. Our ambition is not just to see tenets of modern theory applied globally, but to hear the varied international voices of archaeological research expressing their own ideas and ethos. We hope in particular to help archaeologists who do not normally write in English: Antiquity publishes in English, but translation from other languages will be arranged through the editor or the appropriate correspondent.

The use of English as an archaeological lingua franca is a knotty problem which might deserve some debate. At three recent European meetings (The European Science Foundation, Warsaw, Medieval Europe 2002, Basel, and the European Association of Archaeologists, Thessaloniki) simultaneous translation was not on offer and had seemingly been abandoned. Is this because computers and economics have allowed the English language to become irreversibly empowered? Or has the chicken of English linguistic ineptitude finally eaten the egg of continental glossolalia? It may be that the matter is of particular concern to archaeologists, since to think only in English may restrict the way we think about the past. I was brought up to believe that oneıs lectures should be given and one's field work should always be conducted - that is, both recorded and published - in the language of the country in which one is working (translating context-cards in and out of Italian is not without its diversions). But other countries do not necessarily support this altruistic stance. Archaeological discoveries in Estonia (for example) will not be more globally known for being published in Estonian, and aspiring archaeologists can be forgiven for regarding a knowledge of English as their passport to a wider job market. For all that, I hope it is not too late to organise simultaneous translation at the EAA meeting at St Petersburg, where I am sure many of us will go in the hope of hearing some Russian spoken and so learning something of the thoughts behind the words. The new President of the EAA is Anthony Harding, Professor of Archaeology at Durham, a cosmopolitan European who is doing much to build links with new member-states in the east.

Simultaneous translation, to use a hideous current phrase, is not rocket science. This annoying expression is a media way of implying that something desirable is being delivered with dilatory circumspection, usually by an academic. Werner von Braun (1912-77), who knew a thing or two about rocket science, is credited with another saying: Basic research is what Iım doing when I donıt know what I'm doing. I wonder what the new breed of academic manager would make of that, and whether any rockets would emerge from our more highly prescriptive culture of research planning, monitoring and control. In a humanist science like archaeology, in which the capacity to surprise should never be exhausted, it would be a shame if efficiency were to become the bridle of curiosity.

British parliamentarians studying the role of archaeology in society have produced their first report: The Current State of Archaeology in the United Kingdom. First Report of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (obtainable from the Society of Antiquaries of London, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BE or on the web at www.sal.org.uk/appag. This document is mainly concerned with Britain and with archaeology as a resource - or as commodity - although research (which of course underpins the whole venture) occasionally raise its fair head. The enlightened and the reactionary here sit side by side and should generate some exciting contributions to our DEBATE section. Very important matters of international interest are raised (the archaeology of ploughed sites) and some very dead horses are exhumed (regional monopolies, alias franchises). The study we really need - beyond the confines of Britain as well as in it - is How to raise standards of fieldwork and maximise the research dividend in the context of increasing international de-regulation and market forces. This isn't it, but it is possible here to detect the stirrings of a more international agenda.

One of the leading countries in the art of reconciling archaeological research and management is Sweden, whose insistence that CRM archaeology should be part of a progressive research process (Proposition 1993/94:177) is probably the most important archaeological policy not mentioned in the APPAG report. British archaeologists are so used to gazing northwards in admiration that the latest news from the Scandinavian museum world comes as a bit of a shock. Our correspondent Kristian Kristiansen reports a week-long polemic in the leading Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet between the director of the National Archaeological Museum, Kristian Berg (not an archaeologist) and a group of senior Swedish archaeologists. The argument was precipitated by the announcement of the redundancy of eight museum inspectors, among them five archaeologists, because their competence was deemed not relevant for the future goals of the museum. The Director felt that the museum should be dealing more with the problems of the present, and that research should increasingly be purchased from outside the museum (ie from universities). He criticised archaeologists for being narrow-minded and out of touch with the interests of the day. This brought accusations of arrogance, lack of responsibility towards the archaeological collections, lack of knowledge of the nature of archaeological research and demands for his resignation. Kristian Berg subsequently softened his position, asserting that archaeological research competence would be safeguarded, but continuing to maintain that the past should be viewed from the present. Professor Kristiansen comments: The Swedish polemic seems to signal a general trend in many countries now of a stronger political pressure on museums to deliver what governments and ministers imagine the public wants, a cutting-down on research and a belief that it can be bought from a kind of academic super-market whenever needed. Thus the National Museum in Copenhagen is also making staff redundant as a result of the liberal governmentıs savings on culture. We will probably have to live with these pressures for some time to come, and we may need to formulate a strategy for the role of research in museums, as well as principles for protecting them from too heavy-handed a political domination.

The ANTIQUITY essay prize for 2002 has been awarded to James Whitley for his article Too many ancestors (76: 119-26). (The ancestors strike back in the current DEBATE section, courtesy of Mike Pitts). The CULLEN prize, gifted by Ian Gollop in memory of Ben Cullen who died tragically young, was awarded this year to Nicola Terranato for his article The innocents and the sceptics: ANTIQUITY and Classical Archaeology (76: 1104-11). The ANTIQUITY quiz at TAG (the Theoretical Archaeology Group meeting) was won this year by Ange Brennan and Sarah Goucher, who are (fittingly) students of the host department at Manchester University. They receive a yearıs subscription to the journal and a copy of the Megaliths volume.

On behalf of readers I would like to thank the previous editors, Caroline Malone and Simon Stoddart and their team for giving us five bumper years of Antiquity. Helen Strudwick was an invaluable deputy editor who was silently responsible for some of the best things published, and Anne Chippendale and Libby Peachey produced the journal for many years with ever increasing expertise. This excellent team made many new friends for the journal, and introduced a number of successful innovations. They devised the colour section and the Special Volumes (Celts, Landscapes and Megaliths) and designed the first website, ideas which will continue, albeit in another guise. All have remained at Cambridge where Anne and Libby have set up a publishing service in the name of PfP. They can be found at their website on http://homepage.ntlworld.com/apeach1.

Martin Carver
York, 1 March 2003

ANTIQUITY 295(2003): 5-8

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