Editorial

Our first issue of 2018’s Volume 5 is something of a milestone for several reasons. For us as Co-Editors, we are embarking on the sixth year of co-editing this journal (we started working one year before the first issue came out, defining the journal's scope, recruiting Editorial Board members and our Editorial team, and procuring papers for this exciting but daunting new venture). We are also moving to four issues per year, rather than the previous three. This decision is testimony to the growing interest in, and debate around, community-based engagements with archaeological and cultural heritage. It is also very much thanks to you – our contributors and readers – for wanting to share your experiences (and learn about those of others) with such enthusiasm. Our publisher, Taylor & Francis, offers the ‘online first’ publishing route, meaning we can publish papers even more quickly than before. These ‘online first’ papers appear in print in forthcoming issues, so keep that content coming!

Another change this year is that we are updating the front cover. Many of you will remember that we ran a photograph competition to find new pictures to renew our front cover design. We received well over 100 photographs, reflecting a wonderful array of community interactions, archaeological contexts, and geographical locations. From this bounty, with help from a panel of judges from our Editorial Board and publisher, we have selected 16 photographs which will rotate to the cover over the next two years. For this first cover, we are featuring Ian Moffet's image of Mambiyarra Nayinggul (undertaking a magnetic susceptibility survey of rock art at Red Lilly Lagoon, Western Arnhem Land, Northern Territory of Australia) and Gunter Schöbel's photograph of participants in ‘A day in the Stone Age’ (which took place in the Pfahlbaumuseum Unteruhldingen open air museum at Bodensee [Lake Constance], Germany).

We also selected a number of images as ‘honourable mentions’, which we will feed out via social media over the next two years. Again, thanks to all of the entrants for submitting such terrific images – and please remember, we would love to see papers about these projects!

Revisiting our Mandate: Content, Writing, and Ethics

At this juncture, it seems timely to revisit our goals with this journal. Our principle aim is to publish papers about community heritage and/or archaeology that are accessible and interesting to academics and paid practitioners, as well as ‘lay’ readers, while maintaining the rigour needed for an international peer-reviewed journal. We define a lay reader as anyone who is reasonably informed about and interested in community heritage or archaeology. These are the individuals who emerge in practice as avocationals, amateurs, community members, volunteers, collaborators, ‘co-creators’ (Bollwerk and Connolly 2015; Simon 2010), and ‘ethical clients’ (Mack and Blakey 2004) – as well as simply those whose lives are affected by professional heritage or archaeology. Our ideal papers are those which are understandable and useful to these diverse audiences, with the added challenge that our contributors, readers, Editorial Board, and reviewers are truly international.

As a result we aim for direct, succinct, plain-English writing that does not ‘dumb down’ theoretical or other academic ideas, but defines and situates them so that any interested reader can appreciate their usefulness. This includes asking writers to use the active voice whenever possible (to make agency and action clear) and to reduce jargon (or explain specialist terms when they are essential to a paper's meaning). In short, meeting our journal's mandate requires us to edit purposefully, with global accessibility in mind.

In a broader sense, both our content and ‘house style’ goals are part of our larger ethical aim to find new ways to decolonize academic discourse. Obviously, one small journal cannot change the world, but we do want to open the conversation about community heritage to those most affected by them – people and communities. One way to do this is through language and writing, even as we seek interesting, relevant content.

To arrive at this point, as by now our contributors know, we (along with our Assistant Editors Sarah De Nardi, Jim Gibb, Kaeleigh Herstad, and John Jameson), are fairly hands-on as editors. We often collaborate very deeply (and, we trust, respectfully) with authors to meet our mandate for clarity and accessibility. Happily, because our contributors have tended to support the broader goal noted above, they have been extraordinarily generous and patient through what is, for some, a somewhat atypical, even arduous editing process. We believe, however, that our mutual efforts have demonstrated how writing for a professional journal (despite the obvious professional reasons) can also be another form of community archaeology and heritage practice.

To broaden this form of practice, we clearly need a steady flow of full-length papers, but we also seek more ‘Reflections’ – a form of specialized content that, to our knowledge, does not exist in other professional journals. ‘Reflections’ are shorter, personal accounts written by either professionals or lay people – and we welcome more of the latter, especially. Professionals have written much about the so-called authorized heritage discourse (Smith 2006), and the ways it operates in practice (for good or ill, insofar as local communities and individuals are concerned). We are quite certain that these same local people have opinions (indeed, informed ones) about the on-the-ground realities of this ‘discourse’. We seek their insights and opinions in these pages, and other sorts of personal accounts as well, in the hope that this form of content can, over time, support the sort of conversation that we note above. If you have any ideas (even exploratory ones) about how we might promote more ‘Reflections’, please contact us at our journal's email ([email protected]) or see our guidelines at http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/YCAH-reflections.pdf.

The current issue offers articles that reflect just some of the geographical and vocational diversity that we aspire towards. The opening article, from Jodi Barnes (Arkansas Archeological Survey, USA), traces the development of public archaeology in Arkansas, drawing a line from influential early writers like Charles McGimsey (whose seminal 1972 book introduced the term ‘public archaeology’) through to the more community-engaged forms of public archaeology that are typical of contemporary practice. Within this historical context, Barnes describes a pilot education programme that engages community members in various phases of archaeology research, using a ‘citizen science’ approach which has broad applicability to practitioners worldwide.

Ashton Sinamai (University of York, UK) explores the importance of sound (‘soundscapes’) in enhancing intangible heritage, community understanding and the social valuation of culturally significant places. In the setting of Great Zimbabwe, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Zimbabwe, he examines how the sounds associated with sacred places are essential for their conservation. He presents the case that communities should be able to renew their connections with such places, and to acknowledge and renew the sounds associated with them, without risking political or cultural appropriation by others.

A second article from the USA, this time focusing on the Yahoola High Trestle gold rush-era site in Georgia, is a great example of active professional/avocational collaboration, from project to writing. Its authors are university archaeologist William Balco (University of North Georgia, USA) and local hobbyist metal detectorists Christopher Worick (Lumpkin County Historical Society) and Clifford Shore (Blue Ridge Archaeology Guild). These three worked collaboratively, not only on the archaeological investigation itself, but also on co-producing the article, providing perspectives from their three different viewpoints.

When senior lecturer John Carman (University of Birmingham, UK) offered his personal reflections upon the development and theoretical grounding of public archaeology – comparing its trajectory with another area of specialist interest, conflict archaeology – we spotted an opportunity for another form of collaboration. With Carman's enthusiastic support, we invited practitioners with a wide range of perspectives and experiences to respond to his paper, and were delighted that K. Anne Pyburn (Indiana University, USA), Natasha Ferguson (National Museums Scotland, UK), Donald Henson (University of York, UK) and Kristian Kristiansen (University of Gothenburg, Sweden) wrote such thoughtful responses, to which he replied. The resulting short essays comprise a conversation between several individuals with diverse research and practice perspectives on different forms of community heritage and archaeology.

Finally, the first issue of 2018 closes with a book review from doctoral researcher and museum professional Sanna-Mari Niemi (University of Helsinki and J. L. Runeberg's Home museum, Finland). She reviews The Special Collections Handbook, by Alison Cullingford, reflecting on it as a resource for museum workers but, just as importantly, for community members who may be active in curating their own pasts.