Castles and Coprolites

Over the past few weeks, I've been working on an editorial marking the forthcoming 40th anniversary of Geoarchaeology , which has been a great to chance to spend some time reading through the journal archive. I've been spending time revisiting classic papers that helped shape the field, while also discovering newer papers that slipped past my attention when they were first published (and of course, the first 14 years of the journal were published before I even started my academic career - the journal is only 4 years younger than I am!). One of the joys of working through the archive is being reminded of the remarkable breadth of geoarchaeology. The journal's pages chart the development of approaches ranging from micromorphology and sedimentology to landscape archaeology, provenance studies, heritage science, geochemistry and isotopic analysis. Many of the questions that remain central to the discipline today including site formation processes, environmental change, human-la...

I recently completed my last ever volume of the Archaeological Journal as editor, Volume 179 for 2022. When I first took on this role around 5 years ago I had grand plans to blog frequently about the editorial process and provide hopefully useful reflections on papers etc, but that went totally out the window as my job and family life became ever busier, and the editorial work itself took up a substantial amount of time (more perhaps than I realised when I took it on!). Overall I have really enjoyed the experience, and working with the Royal Archaeological Institute more broadly, but there have been  moments when it has been rather stressful. There is a long standing joke amongst academics about the dreaded 'reviewer 2', but perhaps less well known is the 'disgruntled author' who does not agree with the editor's decision! I am lucky that this has never happened often, and in most cases it is a curt email following a reject and resubmit recommendation, but it can b...