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Archaeology is work. The products of this work—from artifacts and ecofacts to reports and publications—depend on the physical labor of employees, students, volunteers, and communities (local, descendant, and/or Indigenous). These workers’ participation in the archaeological process generally remains implicit, unacknowledged, or silenced. 

Recent scholarship, however, valorizes workers’ knowledge and explores how to incorporate worker perspectives on archaeological sites. Other work builds on the foundations of Indigenous archaeology, incorporating workers as stakeholders in the interpretation of the past. However, archaeological labor is rarely studied in its specificity. 

For this special issue of the Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, we solicit papers that focus on archaeological labor and laborers in historical perspective. We are interested in addressing questions that include, but are not limited to:

• How has labor been acknowledged—or silenced—in past archaeological projects? With what effects?
• How have dynamics of age, race, class, disability, gender and other dimensions of identity intersected with workers’ participation in past archaeological projects?
• How have workers organized themselves and/or unionized? Around what issues? To what ends, and with what results?
• How have labor conditions including—but not limited to—training procedures, payment, safety, legal systems, and worker management impacted the production of archaeological knowledge?
• What cultural productions have developed around archaeological labor?
• What theoretical perspectives and methods enrich the study of archaeological labor in historical context?

We are especially—but not exclusively—interested in work by contingent scholars, early-career researchers, and authors from the Global South, with diverse regions of study. The journal will work with the authors to source institutional funding. Waivers are available for authors without institutional funding.

Interested authors may submit abstracts of up to 500 words by November 15th, 2022. Abstracts should be submitted via the Bulletin of the History of Archaeology site. Those selected for the issue will be notified in early 2023, and full papers will be due by April 1st, 2023. For more information, or to discuss potential contributions, please contact Sam Holley-Kline (shk@umd.edu) and/or Allison Mickel (ajm717@lehigh.edu).

Is it time to pull out that half-finished manuscript from your drawer? Or to write up the talk you gave at that zoom conference?

The Bulletin of the History of Archaeology (BHA) is accepting submissions for publication in 2022.

The journal publishes research not only on the histories of archaeology strictly defined, but also on the subject as it intersects with related histories like those of collecting, colonialism, exploration, fieldwork, heritage, and museums. At the same time, BHA is particularly focused on building interdisciplinary collaborations, and publishes work that takes its methodological cues from fields including anthropology and historical anthropology, archaeology, art history, colonial and postcolonial studies, gender studies, global history, and the history, philosophy, and sociology of science.

The BHA is published online. Articles are made available Open Access as soon as they are ready. Research shows that Open Access publications are viewed and cited more often and for a longer period than publications in subscription journals. Some studies report three times more views and others 89% more downloads. See the Plan S, for the latest initiative promoting Open Access by 14 national funders and 4 charitable foundations.

The BHA is indexed by the Web of Science (Emerging Sources Citation Index), the Norwegian Scientific Database, the European Reference Index for Humanities and Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), EBSCOHost, Google Scholar,  CrossRef, JISC KB+,  and SHERPA RoMEO. 

Authors remain the copyright holders and grant third parties the right to use, reproduce, and share the article according to the Creative Commons license agreement.

If your paper is accepted for publication, you will be asked to pay an Article Publication Charge (APC) of £540 (+VAT, if applicable), which can normally be sourced from your funder or institution. APCs cover all publication costs (editorial processes; web hosting; indexing; marketing; archiving; DOI registration etc. For a breakdown of costs, see here) and ensure that all of the content is fully Open Access. This APC is just 10-20% of some competitors. Many research funders and institutions now have open access funds available. Please, ask your department, library or funder to check your eligibility. Several other foundations, institutes, societies and associations offer publication grants based on subject relevance. Here are a few of them relevant to history, archaeology and material preservation and conservation. For more information on funding, feel free to get in touch with the editorial manager a.sakellariadi@ubiquitypress.com.

Submit Now! We accept online submissions via our journal website. See Author Guidelines for further information. Alternatively, please contact the editors if you are unsure as to whether your research is suitable for submission to the journal.