Three positive developments in archaeological publishing

Here are several recent positive developments in archaeological publishing (not counting the paper I just had accepted by CAJ):

(1) Left Coast Press has bought out the old archaeology list from Academic Press and is re-issuing some classic books with new introductions. The following is from Left Coast Press:

• Having just obtained much of the old Academic Press archaeology list, we are re-releasing them, many in paperback for the first time and all a lot cheaper than they've been in recent years. In addition, several of these titles have been updated.

• Kent Flannery's The Early Mesoamerican Village, one of the classic works of archaeology, is back in print with a new foreword by Jerry Sabloff.

• Flannery has also provided a new Foreword for his volume Guila Naquitz with recent radiocarbon data and a reassessment of some of the original claims.

• There will be recent reflections on Debating Archaeology from Lew Binford when we release it this summer.

• The monumental Histories of Maize book will be accompanied by a paperback abridgement containing the chapters relevant to Mesoamerican archaeology. And new edition is expected soon of George Frison's high plains textbook.

• For question, please contact Caryn M. Berg at: archaeology@lcoastpress.com

These and other old Academic Press books were important contributions to archaeology (in spite of awful indexes and ridiculously expensive prices), and this is a very nice development

(2) Latin American Antiquity has finally abandoned its policy of not publishing more than one paper by a given author within a three-year period. I know of at least one good paper, accepted by LAA, whose author withdrew the paper and published it (quickly) in another top journal when informed that LAA was going to sit on the manuscript for three years to comply with this very bad policy (well, LAA didn’t use the phrase “very bad policy;” that is my own interpretation). That policy said, in effect, that spreading authorship around among archaeologists was more important than publishing quality work in a timely fashion. It was a wrong-headed policy from the start. When I took on the Book Review Editor position for LAA a number of years ago, someone mentioned this policy, suggesting to me that it applied to book reviews as well as articles. I replied that I had no intention of following any such practice while I ran the book reviews. In my mind, quality should be the first criterion for publishing policy.

(3) JSTOR is thinking about increasing its coverage of archaeology journals. I can’t say much about this now. A colleague was contacted about this by JSTOR, and this person asked some of us for suggestions of important journals not included yet in JSTOR.