Editorial

Akin Ogundiran and Adria LaViolette, October 2018, Charlottesville, Virginia (photo: J. Hantman)

With this issue, I will be ending my tenure as Editor-in-Chief of African Archaeological Review after ten years. I am very happy to be able to report that Akin Ogundiran will become the new Editor-in-Chief, and Cameron Gokee the Associate Editor, as of January 1, 2019. Akin and Cameron are already preparing the March 2019 issue. Teresa Krauss, Executive Editor for Archaeology and Anthropology at Springer, and I have been working with Akin over the past several months to insure a smooth transition. I cannot imagine a better person than Akin to take over AAR at this time.

The journal is in ‘good health.’ For the last few years we have taken the necessary steps to be listed in the Social Science Citation Index® (SSCI) Journal Citation Reports (Social Science Edition) and Current Contents® (Social and Behavioral Sciences), in addition to our existing inclusion in their Arts and Humanities Citation Index®. A journal is evaluated for this recognition with respect to its publication schedule and timeliness, issue quality, and citation quantity and quality. Based on the track record of the past decade AAR will now be included in these indices. This is more than an honorary designation – many of our academic colleagues must report such publishing criteria for hiring and promotion, and with our new designation the number of scholars who will want to contribute to AAR will only increase. I want to thank Teresa for shepherding our application for this recognition through a complicated process. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the members of the Editorial Board for their counsel and support over the last ten years.

I am proud of the growth we have seen in the research published in AAR, and that is, again, attributed to you as authors, reviewers, and readers. When I accepted the offer to take up the position of Editor-in-Chief in 2009, African archaeology was experiencing a great burst of energy, and it seemed to me that AAR was in a good position to provide an outlet for innovative research about Africa in an international peer-reviewed, quarterly journal. Let me eschew the complicated formulae that journal evaluators use, and review a simpler calculation: number of pages published by AAR over the course of a year. The journal had an auspicious beginning in 1983 as a single annual volume of approximately 200 pages, published by Cambridge University Press. In 1995 the journal began a new life as a quarterly journal. Over four annual issues, AAR continued to provide about the same number of pages (200) as it had as an annual. There did not seem to be a steady flow of manuscripts into the journal, nor was there a predictable output in the years following. In 2009, I believed, as did many of you, that the energy of both new and senior scholars, from Africa and around the world, should be able to fill the pages of AAR in four high-quality issues per year. You have proven that to be the case. Over the past ten years, the journal has grown to an average of 530 pages per volume, with two years in the mix producing over 700 pages of research and reviews. And, we are proud to have honored the name and original purpose of African Archaeological Review by hosting guest editors who produced 10 special issues, which served as thick ‘reviews’ of important topics. In publishing special issues, however, we also maintained a steady stream of original articles and general issues.

It has been my privilege to serve as Editor-in-Chief overseeing this expansion of AAR. It has been a pleasure to see confidence in AAR restored and perhaps even increased. I can say with my colleagues on the Editorial Advisory Board that we have tremendous pride in the vitality, originality, and capaciousness that is now available in this and in other journals concerned with the archaeology of Africa.

Journals depend on editorial staff moving manuscripts along in a timely and careful fashion, on reviewers reviewing in a fair and also timely manner, and on trust in the journal such that you will want to submit your work for publication. In this vein I warmly thank Matt Pawlowicz for the years of incisive, efficient, collegial, always good-humored support he offered in his role as Managing Editor and Book Review Editor. When founding AAR Editor Nicholas David (1986, p. 3) turned over the reins of the journal to David Phillipson in 1986, he wrote, “David and I both hope that the numbers of unsolicited papers offered to the Review by scholars at all levels and from all parts of Africa and the world will continue to increase. Please keep on submitting.” I can perhaps best close with a wish for Akin and Cameron, and for all of us in African archaeology, following Nic David some 30 years ago: Please keep on submitting.