the next step on the academic ladder and entering an increasingly more competitive academic arena: more and more academic development and maturity is expected from recently graduated students. The phrase‘ publish or perish’ seems very applicable to this current situation, as up and around three publications seems to have become the norm against which a CV will be evaluated, for instance, during a Ph. D.-application.
This experience and / or academic trackrecord is, however, often hard to obtain while studying for your degree( s). This period should instead be spent developing your interests and yourself as a person, and to a lesser degree on building an extensive list of academic publications, conference presentations and similar activities. A certain pressure thus exists to publish one’ s research at an early stage. By trying to facilitate this difficult( and often first) step towards publishing in an academic language through a system of teaching referees and anonymous, international reviewers, we hope to stimulate and support innovative junior archaeologists to publish their own research and make it available for a broader scientific community.
That experiencing and reflecting can both be‘ bitter’ trajectories is something potential authors— and we ourselves as junior editors in the same academic field— have encountered during the last cycles of peer-review for this postponed second volume. This illustrates the exact reason why our initiative, just like the long-running Tijdschrift voor Mediterrane Archeologie 1 and recently initiated Kleos( Amsterdam Bulletin of Ancient Studies and Archaeology) 2, fulfils an important role by stimulating and facilitating student publication in an accessible way. Specifically, the opportunity to receive constructive reviews by specialists in a junior archaeologist’ s own field provides a certain moment of reflection that is usually restricted to a single instance of feedback and rewriting on one’ s first version of a thesis. The writing of a short, focused article appears to be a different exercise entirely.‘ Aller Anfang ist schwer’, is the way in which these important, but now and then difficult, first steps on the academic ladder can be aptly phrased in German.
1 The small alleys, stenopoi, running from east to west in the middle of each house block are excluded from the analysis, as they were mainly used for drainage and not for passage( Robinson and Graham 1938, 33-39; Nevett 1999, 55-56). Another hypothesis is that the alleys serve as light sources, allowing light to enter the houses through windows placed along the walls( Graham 1958, 322). 2 The small alleys, stenopoi, running from east to west in the middle of each house block are excluded from the analysis, as they were mainly used for drainage and not for passage( Robinson and Graham 1938, 33-39; Nevett 1999, 55-56). Another hypothesis is that the alleys serve as light sources, allowing light to enter the houses through windows placed along the walls( Graham 1958, 322).
As we conclude our‘ noble’ moment of reflection, we again remember Confucius who not only tells us that life can at times be bitter, but also that beauty is everywhere around us. We believe this is reflected in the fine collection of papers bundled into this volume.
Contents We are very happy and proud to present to you in this second volume papers that focus on various regions, timespans and themes of research, and work between and across the traditional archaeological‘ specialisations’ offered by the Leiden University Faculty of Archaeology; worthy of the name INTER-SECTION.
The first contribution is by Cathelijne Nater and offers a detailed spatial evaluation of burial practices at the cemetery of Reusel( Noord-Brabant, the Netherlands) from the 10th-13th centuries CE, focusing on grave orientation and morphology. By discussing her findings in the light of differentiation on the basis of social status and gender, Nater comes to the conclusion that the site-specific pattern and inter-site variation in burial customs in this period to some extent resulted from the freedom to which local communities could” give their own interpretation to Christian rituals”.
Tom de Rijk’ s study is also set in the Netherlands and focuses on the Roman cavalry helmet that was excavated at Matilo( Leiden, the Netherlands). De Rijk takes the unique opportunity to thoroughly evaluate this extraordinary find in the same light as the archaeological layers in which it was retrieved,” possibly liminal and in situ”. In this way, de Rijk contributes to a better understanding on the questions” if this helmet should be seen as a ritual deposition” and” whether the concept of liminality can be applied to the Matilo mask”.
The next contribution stays in the field of contextual depositional analyses of archaeological evidence, specifically discussing how remains of arthropods( i. e., invertebrate insects and spiders) can provide additional depositional information in archaeological contexts. In his contribution, Sander Aerts evaluates and elaborates upon Michael Schiffer’ s classic work Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record and proposes a conceptual model linking arthropods assemblages to cultural formation processes, potentially leading to a better understanding of stratigraphy and deposition by allowing for the identification of“‘ invisible’ stratigraphies and functions”.
2016 | INTER-SECTION | VOL II | p. 3