A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

Readers will immediately notice two big changes in this fascicle of the AJA: color is now a prominent part of the Journal, and the print version no longer includes individual book reviews. Although we have long published color images in our popular museum exhibition reviews, beginning with this issue, we now include, at our expense, a color image in virtually every article. Color often makes a significant impact and conveys important information, and we are very happy to be able to offer our authors at least one color image, thanks to the support of the Society for the AJA. We hope to be able steadily to increase the number of color images we offer authors of our printed articles and features.

With this issue, we also move entirely to the online publication of book reviews, although we will continue to publish review articles in the printed fascicles of the Journal. For the past several years, we have published some reviews online and some within the printed pages of the Journal. We are pleased to now offer all our book reviews as open access, free downloadable PDFs from our website. Online publication will ensure that all our book reviews will have the widest possible dissemination and readership. This will benefit authors, reviewers, and scholars. Each review will continue to be listed in the table of contents of each fascicle and be assigned a DOI, so that it will be retrievable via the Internet as far into the future as we can now imagine. As an added convenience, each quarter, subscribers to the AJA e-Update will receive in their email inboxes the links to all our book reviews, as well as online museum reviews and lists of books that are still available for review. If you have not yet subscribed to the AJA e-Update, do so today by going to our website or to www.ajaonline.org/e-update.

This year we are also pleased to announce that we are moving to a more robust online submission system, PeerTrack, from Allen Press. This is a Web-based manuscript submission, tracking, and peer-review program that will help us manage all the vital editorial office functions from the time an author submits a manuscript until that manuscript is published. This will help the AJA staff in Athens, Georgia, and in Boston manage the process, collect the data, handle the correspondence, and track the workflow from office, home, or the road. It will reduce administrative effort, shorten the amount of time from submission to decision, and free up time and resources for other aspects of the Journal and its mission. For authors, it will be easier to submit a manuscript. To submit a manuscript, visit our website and click on Author Guide.

As always, my vision for the AJA continues to be to publish the very best articles and reviews in archaeology and to strengthen the editorial perspective of the Journal by including new kinds of material between its covers. As Editor-in-Chief, I am happy to field your questions about potential articles, forum articles and notes, newsletters, field reports, necrologies, and reviews.

Finally, once again, I want to thank the entire AJA staff—Madeleine Donachie, Vanessa Lord, Katrina Swartz, and Larisa Allen in Boston, and Courtney Canada in Georgia—as well as the reviews editors—Pedar Foss, Rebecca Schindler, and Beth Cohen—for their dedication and vision. They make it all happen.