American Journal of Archaeology

The inaugural all-color issue of the AJA appeared in October 2018 (vol. 122.4). Previously, it was the default policy at the AJA to publish all illustrations in black and white or grayscale. Authors did have the option of paying a subvention to include color illustrations in their articles; the cost was $500 for each printed page that included color. This amount, not surprisingly, exceeded the budgets of many authors. For the most part, the articles that included color were field reports with institutional backing. With the new color policy at the AJA, images can be reproduced in color in both the print and digital publications of the journal with no charge to authors. This change certainly enhances the appearance of the AJA's pages; color also enables the images to present information more clearly and to convey more detail than is possible in shades of gray.

The AJA saw another major change last year. Dr. Madeleine J. Donachie, who became AJA's Managing Editor in November 2004 and was promoted to Director of Publishing in January 2011, resigned from that position last June. Maddie was instrumental in bringing the AJA into the digital age by engineering the partnership between the AJA and JSTOR, putting in place the present online submission platform, and instituting a completely electronic production process. Under Maddie's direction, the AJA was one of the first journals in its field to offer open access content and preserve its publications in digital archives. These initiatives  allowed Maddie to implement the Journal Donation Program, in which more than 10,000 back issues of the AJA were donated to 150 libraries and institutions around the world.  Maddie also gave the AJA a major facelift with her strategy for rebranding the print journal and the AJA's website and her management of this large project. The new design appeared in January 2014:

Fortunately for the AJA, Maddie continues to work with the production staff in a few areas. Dr. Elma Sanders, long-time freelance editor for the AJA, has stepped in as Editor, and Julia Homer brings years of editorial experience to coordinating publication.

Jane B. Carter
Editor-in-Chief

The statue of Aphrodite formerly in Syon House in London is an important instance of the Roman copying tradition, a phenomenon crucial to the understanding of Roman and Greek sculpture production. The statue is a high-quality product of the early first century C.E. from metropolitan Rome; it was esteemed as such in the Italian Renaissance, appreciated as such in 18th-century England, and to some extent scorned as such in the first decade of the 21st century. But after another marble version of the same statue type was excavated in Pozzuoli, the Syon statue regained attention and value. This paper reviews the history of the statue; discusses the statue in the context of its ancient type by presenting its details of manufacture and comparing them to other examples of the type; considers the distinctive use of such statues in the Roman period; explores possible interpretations; and concludes by applying traditional methodology to trace the date, subject, and maker of the model. This methodology suggests that the model of the Syon-Munich-Pozzuoli type was a statue of Aphrodite in Athens of ca. 420 B.C.E., attributable perhaps to the sculptor Alkamenes. The paper demonstrates the processes involved in the historical and aesthetic assessment of a Roman copy.

This study proposes a definition of a distinct region of Late Minoan (LM) IA Crete on the basis of ceramic style and discusses its cultural meaning. A summary comparison of the stylistic features of Neopalatial, mainly LM IA, fine tableware from Myrtos-Pyrgos and other sites of southeastern Crete shows a distinct style, and I argue that the southeast should be considered a ceramic region. Current understandings of LM IA culture have emphasized homogeneity, echoed also in a perceived similarity of ceramic styles. A contextual analysis of the fine tableware from Myrtos-Pyrgos associated with contemporary architecture shows that the consumption of two different ceramic styles coexisted in LM IA at this site, one local to southeastern Crete and the other characteristic of the northcentral part of the island. The analysis indicates that contexts of power and display are associated with the use of nonlocal ceramic and architectural styles. As a result, I argue that different types of material culture reflect different social mechanisms, that regionalism is, therefore, a multifaceted phenomenon that produced nonoverlapping regions in LM IA Crete, and that the southeast should be regarded as a distinct ceramic region.1